Martha's Vineyard - The fish of a lifetime

A true story...

My brother had been having a frustrating week of fishing one summer and on the last day of his vacation was determined to put a bluefish in the freezer for my mother. He only had a short window of opportunity to fish and decided that the "big bridge" in Edgartown posed his best chances.

On his way to his fishing spot, he chatted with an elderly couple and explained his quest. In a few short casts of his plug, wham! he was on. And man could this fish fight. It ended up stripping a significant amount of line off the reel and he quickly adjusted the drag in hopes of tiring the fish out quickly. In classic folklore fashion, the fight became a consistent tug-of-war where he gained some on the fish followed by the fish taking more line. On and on it went. At one point, he was so tired he had to sit down on the rocks to rest, holding on to the rod and letting the fish pull on the line.

The fight lasted several tens of minutes and he still had not landed the fish. Finally, as he was holding the rod tight, snap!, the line busted and went limp.

Distraught over the whole experience and simply out of time, he started to make his was back to the car. On his way, he came across the same elderly couple and explained his misfortune, having fought the fish of of lifetime for what seemed like an eternity, only to have the line break. The couple looked at him, held up a lure and asked if the lure was his? Stunned, his answer was "yes". The couple laughed and said that the guy on the other side of the bridge recounted a similar tale, only to reel in my brother's line!