The tug is the drug. Nice story.

Growing up flyfishing Colorado, I remember my first truly big, big fish. CO has plenty of tiny to 5-6 pound trout, but seldom larger. When I was 10 or 11, we took a 2 week trip to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota to canoe and fish the backcountry for whatever would bite. Many portages between very remote lakes and all that. After a long portage, we came to a big lake and my dad suggested I tie up some big water gear. On my own, I tied up a 6 oz. banana sinker to about 5' of mono with a trolling spoon off the back. As I had never really "trolled" before, so I had no idea what I was doing.

Anyway, we get into the canoes and start to make our crossing. I let out a bunch of line and held the rod between my legs. After a few miles of paddling we were coming to the end of the lake and that rod doubled over. I pulled back and it felt like I snagged the bottom. Gave the rod to my dad and he immediately could tell it was a massive fish. He begged for me to take the rod back to fight it, but I wasn't having any of that. I knew I wasn't ready for it and made him fight the fish. 20 mins later, up comes a 25 pound Laker. We flop it on board and headed to shore. My Uncle and Cousins were in another canoe and videoed the whole fight on one of those huge old school VHS recorders. I have that old VHS tape around here somewhere.

Anyway, we get to shore with this Laker and it was as big as most of us kids. Lots of pics taken. We ran into some other backcountry canoers and showed them the fish. The look on their faces was priceless. As it was the end of our trip, we had run out of most of our food, so that beast fed us extremely well for the last 2 days.

Once we got back to the lodge | civilization, we told the lodge owner about the fish. He asked how big and I pointed to the big laker mounted behind him and said it was at least twice as big as that fish. His jaw hit the ground. Said no way. So we showed him the video and he about cried. Turns out he'd lived there his whole life and never saw a Laker bigger than about 15 pounds. Then we told him we ate it all down to the bone and tears really started to flow. The end.