An extreme example of an outdoorsman would be Eric Young. Eric Young is a professional wrestler who also really enjoys fishing. He enjoys it so much he started a TV show called Off the Hook: Extreme Catches. The show is videos of himself fishing all around the world for very rare fish and in very strange ways. One of his shows consisted of him riding a paddle board or an oversized surfboard, fishing for sharks. The thrill he must have had is the whole reason people love to fish. Fishing is one of my favorite things to do and the stories I have taken from the great activity, are stories I will remember for the rest of my life.

Some, of the many fishing stories come from all around the Minnesota Wisconsin area. The first good stories came from when I was too young to remember, and my parents tell me when I’m old enough to understand. My family always went to different cabins in mostly Minnesota and Wisconsin and it wasn’t a vacation to do a lot of stuff, but more to relax and have fun doing whatever comes up. One of these trips was with my whole family and we went up to Crivitz, Wisconsin. This lake was really good for fishing at the time. but I was too young to realize it. As a little kid, I spent most of my time in the game room playing pool and pinball, and when I did find the desire to venture outside it was to sit in the hot tub or just to go swimming in the lake. Near the end of the trip my cousins and I decided to try fishing off the dock. Our little Cars and Looney Tune poles equipped with a bobber, hook, and worm dropped right off the dock into the perfectly calm water. Soon all of our bobbers start to dance and before we knew it little bluegills found interest in our worms and ate them all without one being caught. Soon the parents came and helped put new worms on and watched the fish take the bait once again, until finally I yanked my Cars pole into the air trying to catch the 5 inch beast and finally succeeded with a great amount of joy. My dad, just as excited as I was, helped take off my prized sunny and threw back the fish for us to catch again. The first fish doesn’t have to be big to cause a great love of fishing.
My love for fishing kept growing back at home in Minnesota. I started to fish everyday I could on the Cannon River. Some days my friends and I would wake up early and go to the river and catch over 50 sheephead and a few nicer walleyes and bass, and the next we wouldn’t get anything except the ruined excitement of snagging a heavy rock submerged at the bottom of the river. One day my buddy and I didn’t have anything going on and thought we’d go down to the river and try to waste a day on something fun. Arriving at the river on a perfect day, sunny and 75, I was looking forward to a great day of fishing, and thats just what we got. From the first cast to the last, we were catching fish at least every other cast, whether they were nice or not is a different story. Most of the fish were sheephead, which don't really fight to much, so when we had a bite and the tug on the line seemed to be bigger, the excitement immediately rushed through our bodies, wondering what kind of fish this will be. Most of the time it was just a bigger sheephead or a carp, but a few of the many times it happened, the big pull was a bass, northern pike, or a walleye. That’s the whole reason we went that day to fish, to get a lot of bites and possibly a few nicer fish. Our hot spot on the Cannon River is also home to the river’s few rope swings, so after a solid four hours of fishing, my friend and I decided to stop fishing and do some swimming on the perfect day. As my passion for fishing grew back in my home town, my family and other families who have the same love for fishing, started to go on vacations specifically for our love of casting lines into water.
One of our first trips we took was to a little town in Northern Wisconsin called Iron River. We stayed in a little cabin called Owl’s Roost on Iron Lake. Iron Lake is a lake with about 250 acres and has no access for boats so its a quiet lake with mostly rowboats and dock fishing. We went up there both for fourwheeling and fishing, but when we weren’t fourwheeling, we were out on the lake fishing. As soon as we got there, the first thing to do is immediately hit the docks to see what we could catch. First cast on the rickety, red dock we start pulling in sunfish like crazy and then all of a sudden, my friend makes a bad cast on the edge of lake barely in the water and starts to reel in to get settled in a better spot, but while he’s reeling in a twenty inch northern decides to grab his small hook and worm and take it for a solid twenty minute fight, only to lose the battle to my friend. Being such a small lake, we were surprised to catch a northern, so we decided to take the rowboat and go around the lake and right away we started catching some nice size bluegills, and then some bigger crappie, and then my bobber drops as fast as a frog leaps away from a curious boy. My friend stumbled through the twelve foot rowboat looking for the net, thinking this one is going to need it. Both of us were thinking it was an aggressive northern, for the amount of line that was being taken out of my 5:2, Abu Garcia, spinning reel. As this beast of a fish slowly makes its way closer to the boat, and finally surfaces my friend and I were astonished to see a five pound, eighteen inch largemouth bass hooked onto my yellow gumball jig. Out of extreme excitement, we immediately paddled back to our little cabin and showed our parents all of the bluegills, crappie, perch, and then our prized bass. Once our parents saw how much we really loved to go fishing, and especially catch nice fish, they started to talk about going on more trips to other places to catch better fish than just little fish on a lake that happened to be where we went fourwheeling.
Our next destination to fish was in our home state of Minnesota. We decided to go up to South Long Lake, near the Brainerd area, and just west of the legendary Mille Lacs Lake. This lake was much bigger than Iron Lake so we brought up our nineteen foot, 190 horse, Maxum powerboat. We stayed in a nice cabin on the lower end of the lake with another family which we have always been close with. As what seems to be a new necessity, right when we pulled into our new cabin home for a week, I unloaded our luggage and immediately hit the dock to see what fish were easily available at this lake. It took a while for the fish to start biting, but after about fifteen casts just off the dock, the sunnies and other dock fish started to bite heavily. The pole I was using was my little Lucky Lion kids pole I bring on every one of my fishing trips for good luck, and it actually works pretty well for dock fishing. As I was pulling in sunnies left and right, my eyes barely caught, through the clear water, a huge fish swim right by my bait and exclude itself under the shaded dock. Quickly, I pulled my line up and kept putting my hook right in front of its face to see if it would go after the big, delicious night crawler. After a few more tries, I tried to get my friend to come see this Goliath of a fish, and as soon as I took my eyes of it, my pole snapped down into such an intense bend, I thought it might break. Being as careful as I could, with fear of my thin line breaking on such a beast of a fish, I let the fish calm itself while slowly bringing it into the dock. After a solid ten minute dock fight with a fish much too big to be on the end of my little Lucky Lion pole, I managed to land the giant up on the dock. My dumbfounded friend and I, were amazed to see the nineteen inch, five and a half pound largemouth bass lying on our new dock attached to the pole I’ve had since I was six. Without even going on the boats, I managed to catch enough fish to for sure fill my plate. The next morning, was a perfect fishing morning; sixty degrees, no wind, and there were no other boats on the lake. Waking up with those conditions got myself and the rest of my fishing buddies excited to hit the water and catch some fish. Having the lake map etched into my brain after a good hour talking about where to go the night before, I was prepared with several different areas that should be thriving with the fish we wanted to catch. The first spot we decided on was the reeds for panfish, to atleast get some fish in the boat, and like we expected, the panfish were biting like crazy. In the same spot, my dad’s friend made a good cast right at the edge of the weeds and instantly his bobber dropped to what seemed like the bottom of the lake, and the fish swam with it. Right when he tried to set the hook, the fish snapped his line. Astonished with the power of the fish, the rest of our boat casted in the same spot, but nothing happened, so we went back to fishing and this time, my dad had the same thing happen to him, but his line held long enough for the fish to make a giant leap into the air and high enough to let us see that we were dealing with an estimated two foot, seven pound largemouth bass. This fight lasted much longer, and the fish slowly made its way to the net waiting for it in the water, but with one more tug of the fish, it escaped right before it landed itself into the net. We kept casting in the same spot searching for the same big fish with two, perfectly good jigs in its mouth, but we never got the chance to find him on one of our lines again. Without moving spots, the four of us, limited out on bluegills, so we moved to a shallower end of the lake that was known to catch a vast amount of northern pike. Once we got to spot that looked like a good area, we threw out our lines, hoping to catch a trophy northern. The bait we decided to use was basically the same as panfish; slip-knot bobbers, with a colored gumball jig, and either a worm, leech, or minnow. After about an hour of many casts with only two catches, I decided to switch to a heavier pole equipped with a Shad-Rap 6 Firetiger lure, which I have always thought was my lucky lure. Our boat, being not specifically made for fishing, was not fit for all four of us to be sitting down, so I was the one to be standing up. With the aerial view I had of the lake, I could see the bottom with ease. My Firetiger painted lure, being so bright, while reeling in I could see my lure from about twenty feet away and I could see the action moving well and it seemed to be swimming at the perfect depth. Only after a few casts with my lure, the rest of my fishing group wanted to change spots, for they didn’t change baits at all. I insisted on staying, due to the fact I just switched lures and it looked like for sure it would catch a fish. Finally, on the cast I said was the last, but I knew it wouldn’t be, I watched my lure approach the boat, but this time there was an at least forty inch northern swimming behind my “lucky” lure. As the lure got closer and closer to the boat, I hoped and prayed it would take a bite at my line. With the lure almost hitting the surface, the northern finally seemed to take interest in the highly painted, fish catching machine. As soon as it grabbed on, the fish swam away in fear of being pulled into the boat, but the fish must have had a bunch of fear, because that one jerk of the head to get away, was enough to break my line and swim away with my lucky lure. I ended up buying the same lure at a local bait shop and I kept using it throughout the trip. I never got the chance to get that big northern on my line again, but I did manage to pull in some decent size bass off the dock. Whether we land those big ones or not, the adrenaline that you get when its on the line is the reason I love fishing. As my fishing experiences grew, we ended up taking trips to better and better lakes.

By far the best lake I have ever had the chance to fish at, and the most recent, was Lake of the Woods, what is known to be the Walleye Capital of the World. With the same family, except this time it was only the guys of the two families, we made a seven hour trip, at the end of December, up to a little Cabin right off of Rainy River. From where we stayed we could have drove our fourwheelers down the rainy river and to the actual lake in about a half an hour, but we decided to make it easy and take a five minute drive with the trucks to an entrance that had a plowed path all the way across the lake, which made it seem like a highway because the lake went on forever and there were so many other fisherman hoping to get a piece of what the legendary lake had to offer. The first day, we didn’t really know where to go so we decided to follow the locals and find an opening in between a herd of about 300 ice houses. We dropped our lines down and slowly we started pulling in some saugers, but no walleye. After about four hours we managed to waste a lot of time on catching nothing and watching our Vexilar flash lights at us like crazy symbolizing all of the fish that keep swimming by our baits. We ended up with about six, twelve to twenty inch saugers, and nothing else. With extreme boredom taking over of watching our bobbers, from the other ice house, I hear my dad yell with a great deal of excitement, and maybe even too much, throwing a couple of unnecessary explicit words into his screaming voice. Immediately I could tell there was a big one on, but then the excitement turned to anger, due to the big fish escaping from his line and lingering in the area of our lures down the twenty inch hole of ice. Watching our lines, with great anxiety and patience, my friend and I wait for one of the bobbers to drop. Luckily, mine took an aggressive dash to the bottom of the ice, waiting for me to set the hook. As I knew, I had set the hook good I told my friend to reel his up, due to fear of the lines getting tangled with an aggressive unknown fish thrashing around in the unknown waters under the ice. With the longest fight I’ve ever had ice fishing coming to an end, I had the whole group surrounding the one hole, waiting to see what will arise from the depths of Lake of the Woods, and hopefully help get, the best landed on top of the ice. Finally, the head of a thirty-two inch, five pound Northern Pike comes bursting through the hole, as if it wanted to see land. After measuring and weighing it, we realized this isn’t a fish to keep, so we slid it back into the hole. Out of the whole trip, this story was only the second most surprising.
The most memorable fishing story I have had was from the same lake as the last, the
legendary Lake of the Woods. On the last day of the trip, it was a freezing, negative thirty degrees out, so cold that nobody else from my cabin had the desire to fish, thinking they have already had a good enough time. With the wind being a mild six miles per hour and having a heated tent, negative thirty degrees wasn’t so bad, it was actually the nicest day of them all. Due to me being the only one wanting to fish, I got up before everybody else, packed all my necessities into my sled and took off for the Rainy River. Only a couple minute walk from our cabin, my tent was visible from the window and soon behind me came my friend to watch and sit out on the river with me, but not to fish. Within the first couple of minutes my lures started to get a bunch of little hits and my bait kept being robbed, which I thought was weeds, because we were fishing in four feet of water. Oddly, all of those little hits, were little Northerns biting at our hooks. We figured this out because we soon started to get comfortable with how they bit and we started pulling up little Northern, only to be thrown back. Catching only little Northern, I decided to move my tent to more of the center of the river, where it was about six feet. Surprisingly, two feet made a huge difference. We didn’t get as much bites, but when we did get one it was a good sized Northern that we almost always landed. After about two hours of catching Northern, the sun was getting close to setting so we thought about packing up, but right as I was getting up, I realized my bobber was down, so I went over and set the hook and reeled in a seventeen inch walleye. Being the first walleye caught on the whole trip, we thought we better stay out and try to catch some more. I put a new fathead minnow on my jig and dropped it down to about a foot off the bottom, and right away I started getting nibbles and then, again my bobber dropped and I reeled in another smaller walleye of about twelve inches. The sun was at the edge of the sky so I dropped my bobber down one more time and waited about two minutes and decided to start packing everything up while leaving our lines down. As I took my first step out of the tent to clean up the outside of our area, my friend asks me a very important question I will remember forever. My friend said to me, “Andrew, where’s your bobber?”. Not knowing I had my line in, my friend thought I had packed it up, but I knew there was a fish who ran with my line. Immediately, I ran back into the tent and grabbed my little ice fishing pole and yanked up the sky with it, making sure I set the hook good. Right after I set the hook, line started to be taken out of the reel and we realized there is a beast at the end of this line. Only five minutes later, I had managed to reel in a fish that when swimming by, we saw the head in one hole and through another hole two feet away we saw the end of its back. Struggling to get this beast of a head through the six inch hole cut by a hand auger, the fish finally cooperated and swam right up the hole and onto the surface of the ice. Shortly after we realized what it was, screams were being exchanged through my friend and I, for we have never seen a fish this big. The only fish worth screaming about on this trip ended up being a twenty-eight and a half inch, six pound walleye home to the Rainy River. Finally getting to pack up, and carry back our prize through the door was a great feeling, because the parents couldn’t believe how a fish this size was caught by a fifteen year old boy, and will probably never experience the same adrenaline rush that just happened.
Since I first started to grow a love for fishing on those lakes meant for beginners and catching sunnies off the dock, and then to fishing in my home town on the river, where surprisingly, there is a vast amount of fish species, and just because I have nothing else to do on a gorgeous summer day, to now being able to take trips all over the place, specifically for fishing because my passion of fishing has grown so much. Whether its a five inch, first fish, caught on a lake not meant for fishing on, or a trophy walleye caught on one of the best lakes in the world, the excitement fishing brings to not only me, but all the other extreme anglers out in the world like Eric Young is an excitement that can be felt only so much in a humans lifetime. Some of the stories people bring back from fishing trips are better to hear than witness, due to all the crazy exaggerations every fisherman has, and those stories are a big part of how the love of fishing has spread throughout the world, and especially through me.