I know there been few topics in the past about fishing stories but its been awhile since the last time so i'm sure lot more has happened since then. This is one that happened long time ago.


I was about 8 years old when my dad and I went to the coast for couple of days. We did some fishing off the pier but we didn’t have any luck (someone actual did catch small shark off it the previous day) so we decided to go to near by lake called Lake Lopez. We saw good size buck on the way there standing on side of the road so that was cool. We got the lake and drove around looking for good spot. My dad spotted open water area so we went out there and fished maybe about hour or so. He finally caught good size largemouth bass while I didn’t have any luck. We decided to drive around the lake little bit more to see if we could find another spot. We came across this little gulch about 50 feet inland and about 40 feet across covered in moss/lily pad, and other plant life on both sides but there was clearing in between from all the waves although currently the lake itself was calm in that spot. We saw some Bluegills there. We didn’t have any mealworms and all we had was red worms. We throw on some boppers and cast in. Within about 10 seconds of the first cast, the fish went crazy and we end up catching them as if they were jumping in our nets willingly. After awhile my dad went to the local bait shop and got three cans of mealworms while I stayed there at the place which was actually about 150 feet from the park ranger/security station so they were keeping their eye on me for my dad. He came back and we were must have caught about 30 bluegills by this point and it started to slow down little bit. One bummer thing was because of the moss and plant life on the water, we had to drag the fish through all that muck and several times we snapped our lines. It did look like bopper graveyard out there. I think we must have lost maybe about 6 of ours the whole time we were there. Finally on this one cast. The bopper sat there for actually couple of minutes then next thing I know, it sank down as if a whale was on the hook end. I set the hook and fought, and fought it (at that time, both my dad and I thought maybe it was a largemouth bass) the whole fight looking back was actually for close to minute give or take. I was reeling the fish in and the line snapped! The bopper itself was on the surface but entangled really bad with the muck. I was crying needless to say but I didn’t notice it at the time but my dad did. The bopper was so entangled that the fish couldn’t get away although it was trying. What did my dad to? He took off his shoes and socks, took out his wallet, and went right into that water, muck and all the way up to his chest and got that fish for me. It was the biggest Bluegill I’ve never seen, let alone caught. Found out it wasn’t record but it was record for that lake. We had our picture taken with it.

Now in case of horrible poetic justice gone very, very wrong. We did actually keep come of the good size fish for us to eat but we caught and released the others. We went to the fish cleaning station and when my dad put it on, it was so slimy, the fish end up sliding down the hole into a 55-gallon drum full of fish guts. What did my dad do? He took the drum from underneath that bench and was up to his shoulder in fish guts looking for that fish. I helped me but we never found it lol.

Looking back at it, it was such an awesome thing for my dad did for me not only once, but twice. Its things like that, which will always make him my hero. I would definitely do that for my son, or any children I may have in the future.