Today I'm going to stray from my usual political pontifications and tell a tale of the ageless struggle between man and nature. To wit, man, a supposedly superior being equipped with cognitive percipience, and nature, a creature with a supposedly lesser developed encephalon with not much more than a primal awareness for survival.

It's a tale about the natural evolution of that being which emerged from the primordial watery stew of teeming eukaryotes cells many millennia ago, and, with time, developed arms and legs and learned to walk upright as the crown of all creation.

It's a tale of vastly superior intelligence equipped with well adapted opposable digit dexterity, and how that superiority can be tested by a natural survival adaptation of a supposedly inferior lower life form.

But most of all it's a tale of wit and the witless, of consequence and kharma, of ego and humility, of the conqueror and the conquered.

The wind howled down the lake that day. It was late spring, a bit overcast, a good time to fish for a big largemouth bass.

I was an avid fisherman back then, 1996. The 110 acre lake I lived on for 17 years and fished regularly was a narrow dammed up valley that laid out on a general west to east direction so the due west wind that day blew 30 miles an hour or so down the lake and it was like a wind tunnel. It was tough to fish in those conditions because of the wind but that didn't deter me. I headed up lake, towards the deep water at the dam, where there was a large cove that was blocked from the wind. It was about a two mile trip and didn't take long with the wind at my back. Hardly anyone was on the lake except for my good buddy who was also fishing out of his boat, that was OK by me since there would be less boat traffic to deal with and I, for the most part, had the lake to myself.

This lake was full of largemouth and smallmouth bass, hybrid stripers, catfish, crappies, bluegills, walleyes, and tiger muskies. I would fish for all of them at times but I considered myself, by and large, a bass fisherman. I spent probably 90% percent of my fishing time fishing for largemouth bass. All catch and release using artificial lures, of course. I periodically fished in bass tournaments and thought myself to be a pretty good fisherman, I knew how to catch them and was quite good at it. The 10% of the time I wasn't bass fishing was spent bait casting and trolling for walleye, the most tasty freshwater fish there is, in my humble opinion. Over the years I had caught all of the fish I listed above but largemouth was my go to, and what I was after this windy day.

As I got to the head of the lake near the dam I motored my bass boat around the large point that extends out into deep water and into the wind protected cove. This large point that separated the main body of the lake and the cove was in the deepest part of the lake and held the biggest fish that would use the point like a highway from the deep water to the shallows. It was here that I had planned to spend most of my day fishing out of the wind.

As soon as I made the turn around the point my boat began to sputter and died. "What the hell", I thought as I made my way to the back of the boat to determine the problem. It didn't take long to figure it out, I was out of gas. I had forgotten to fill up the tank in my zeal to get on the lake. I still had my trolling motor to get around with so I used it to fished the cove for about an hour or so. I only caught a couple of small bass and then it dawned on me that I'd have to use my trolling motor to get all the way back to the boat ramp, against a 30 mile an hour head wind. It was going to take a while and I would need all the power left in the battery to make it back. So, reluctantly, I turned the boat and headed back toward the point.

As I made the turn I realized that the wind had picked up even stronger than before. I had the trolling motor on high and it just barely crawled along. This was going to be a long trip back to the boat ramp.

About a quarter of the way back I decided to make the best of a bad situation. I had to keep my foot on the trolling motor peddle and couldn't really maneuver around the boat so I was for all intents and purposes, stuck in the front seat of my boat or the wind would push me back and I'd lose ground. But, right near my feet was a medium heavy spinning rod and reel with the littlest deep diving Rapala Shad Rap lure on it. This, by any means, was not the best rig for trolling, it had probable 8 or 10 pound test line on it and was used mostly around boat docks and the shoreline. I picked it up anyway and let out about 75 feet of line behind the boat and commenced to trolling. I was keeping the boat close to the shoreline and I could feel the little inch and a half shad rap banging across the bottom and ripping over laid down logs and stumps in maybe 2 or 3 foot of water. I knew it was just a matter of time before I would hang the lure up on something, and I was correct in that assumption, but it wasn't a snag I hung it up in.

The medium heavy rod bent over doubled and I thought, "here we go, I'm going to lose that lure". It felt like I had snagged a log, but to my surprise the log began to move, slowly and laterally. I had caught enough of them before to know immediately what it was, it was a tiger muskie, and a big one. At this point I was about half way back to the ramp and I had a conundrum at hand, I couldn't fight this fish and troll against the wind both at the same time. So I headed for a little deeper water and threw the anchor out to hold me in place while I fought this monster.

I went around the boat a couple of times fighting this fish with extra precaution around the anchor rope. I couldn't horse the fish in with such light line and tackle so it took 15 or 20 minutes to finally get it next to the boat where I finally caught a glimpse of it. It was a big tiger muskie. I estimated it to be pushing 4 foot long and probably at least 20 pounds. That's not particularly big for a true muskie, but a tiger muskie is a hi-bred and doesn't get as heavy as the true muskies. For this northern Illinois lake though, this was a very large muskie and most probably a lake record.

The next conundrum I had was there was no net in the boat and with the razor like teeth that muskies have it is highly inadvisable to grab them by the lip to land them like one would do with a bass. That little lure was deeply embedded in the fishes' jaw and wasn't going to be easy to get out. I had to have a pair of pliers to get it out so I could release the muskie unharmed. The only alternative I had to get the fish out of the water was to do what's termed "gill it", which is to slide your hand inside the fishes' gill to lift it out of the water. I know this sounds harsh, but if done properly it doesn't hurt the fish, but it's very risky since the gills are as sharp as its teeth. I reached down, slid my hand behind one of its gills and lifted it from the water wherein I started walking around the boat looking for the pliers, the quicker the better to get it back in the water to release it. I held the fish up with my elbow angle less than ninety degrees and the tail was dragging the bottom of the boat, it was a big fish. My intention was to weigh it, get a measurement and a quick photo so as to release it back into the water as quickly as possible.

In the meantime my good buddy who had given up on fishing because of the wind, saw what was transpiring right out from his dock and knew I had a big one on. He jumped back in his boat and came out to help if he could. He quickly saw my predicament and eased his boat perpendicular to mine to lend a helping hand. He had a pair of pliers in his boat so I eased the fish back down in the water with just its head above the waves. My left hand was in the fishes' gill and I held the muskies mouth open with my right hand so he could access the deeply embedded treble hooks, with great deference to the razor sharp teeth. He twisted the lure back and forth several times to no avail, suddenly, with no warning, he gave the lure a mighty tug and out the lure popped from the fishes' mouth. As he did this he pulled the fish from my left hand and my right hand was raked across the fishes' razor-like teeth. The fish just look at me as it slowly lowered itself into the water and swam away. My buddies eyes got really big as he backed away slowly from my boat using his trolling motor. He looked shocked and apologized. I had caught the biggest muskie of my life and didn't even get a chance to at least take a picture, for the sake of bragging rights.

On top of this all I was now bleeding profusely from both hands, my left hand from the sharp gill and my right hand from being raked across the teeth. Those razor-like teeth laid my right hand wide open. Muskies' saliva have an anti-coagulant property to it so it just bled and bled. My left hand wasn't much better and I still had half of the lake to traverse to get back to the boat ramp. My buddy offered to tow me there but I told him I could make it. Luckily I didn't need my hands to work the trolling motor so I wrapped one hand in my tee shirt and the other in a towel and off I went, bandaged like I had just lost a battle in a war against nature, as it was.

I made it back to the ramp, had a heck of a time getting the boat out of the water and driving home. All the while, to the ramp and then home, I pondered, and I now ask of you:

Whom, in this tale, was the conqueror and whom was the conquered?