Yep, this video pretty much sums up how fishing feels for most of us. When people ask me why I go fishing, my answer is pretty standard. I just like getting outside, being in nature, and hopefully landing a few decent ones.
However, after a few hours the relaxing effect of the outdoors wears off a bit and it becomes all about what you catch, and when you aren’t catching anything it can be pretty dang infuriating. But there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that will move you from 0 to 100 faster than losing a big fish at the last second. It’s pure agony.
Well, a video of a man trying to land a decent sized northern pike in a small canoe came across my feed and it shows a scene of excitement, struggle, and heartbreak, all in the matter of a few seconds. Our angler was fishing in the The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Northern Minnesota, and the clip starts after the guy hooked into pike and reeled it to the canoe’s side. All that’s left was to get it out of the water, but he was trying to use a much too small trout net for the job and just couldn’t get it inside.
Then, as the fish thrashes in the water, the hook comes out of its mouth, meaning the last line of defense was the tiny net. The man tries to place his pole down in the canoe, but misses and it falls into the water and immediately sinks down into the murky depths.
At this moment, he knew the only thing left to do was land the fish, but sensing freedom, the pike dug deep and leapt out of the net and back into the water.
Immediately you can see the pain in the man’s eyes, but things perk up one final time when he realizes the exhausted fish is still right on the water’s surface. If you know anything about fishing for big pike, they get utterly exhausted from fighting and will often just kind of chill in the water near the boat or dock until they can regain their bearings. He tries once more to scoop it up with the net and actually gets super close, but once again, the fish makes its way out and this time swims far away to freedom.
The look of devastation on this guy’s face is actually a bit hard to watch, but his verbal “WTF” is downright comical. He clearly thought this was going to be one of his all time great fishing stories but it turned out to be an all time bad one.
Tough look, but hey, at least you got a viral video for the entire world to see, right?
