You never forget your 1st

When I was younger, I used to fish for trout, salmon, bluegill, bass, pike, catfish, and almost any popular freshwater fish in Oregon you could think of; until one day we had an epic fishing day of salmon on the Columbia River according to most fishermen. Why do I say according to most fishermen? Well, it's because I was still a child and we caught tons of salmon, and the people that me and my father tagged along with also wooped out their bat and started beating on the salmon. During that trip, I managed to land the biggest fish of my life, and it's still my personal best today, which was a 30 lb chinook or king salmon, but the bad news was they beat it to death with blood everywhere and what not. Also the slaughter houses in The Philippines kind of scarred me for life, so I kind of grew into a "humanitarian" type of person. By now I became a fishing fiend at a young age, but after that fishing trip which concluded with countless salmon, I decided to quit.

One day I grew up and moved near the Salish Ponds, and one day I randomly decided to go fishing there. I forgot what it was like to go trout fishing, and I forgot when fishing at a place that stocks trout, people fish really close to each other. So I managed to find this spot, until a group of people came up right next to me. Apparently I was at a known "hotspot", and they were trying to bully their way into stealing my spot, but I gave them a real bad attitude. I was ready to kick some...well you get the point. I just wanted to have some peaceful fishing time.

After that spiel, I noticed some guy fishing a few "safe" paces away from me and he was catching some small trout. He was using a spinner, so I copied him except I threw a kastmaster. I remember kastmasters were killer back in my younger years. Yet I still wasn't catching. I asked him about his technique, and he told me he would let it sink to the bottom first, than retrieve it. So I did that, but I still didn't get a fish because as I was retrieving it, I could see my lure and I was almost done reeling it in...

But then I reeled it into a snag, but then I looked in the water and saw a glimmering beautiful rainbow; and it looked huge according to my standards. The fish thrashed extremely hard and I was trying to land it with my hand while asking the guy next to me to help me; but I managed to pull him to the bank:

I know it's only a 3 lb rainbow trout, but at the time, I was kicking and screaming because I thought I caught a monster. I caught 11 more smaller ones, but you never forget your 1st

and so it began...

The Fishing Journey