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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Humans get last laugh on monster northern

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 1/28/16

NEAR ELY— A message from his friend Dan Kirkman told Gary Smith, of Ely, that his day had just gotten better. Smith, who had been fishing on an Ely area lake last Saturday, had watched helplessly …

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Humans get last laugh on monster northern

Posted

NEAR ELY— A message from his friend Dan Kirkman told Gary Smith, of Ely, that his day had just gotten better. Smith, who had been fishing on an Ely area lake last Saturday, had watched helplessly as his brand new trout rod, a Christmas gift from his son, along with a new reel, had been dragged down one of the holes in his fish house by something big.

Smith was working the line in the opposite hole when the lunker grabbed his other bait. “I heard a bang in the corner and I turned to see my new rig spinning in the air and heading straight for the hole,” recalls Smith. He dove towards the rod and reel but it disappeared into the water just ahead of his outstretched hand.

Smith had left the reel’s bail open, but the strike was so hard and fast that it didn’t even matter. He cursed his luck, assuming he was not only out his new rod and reel, but that he missed his chance to get a look at the whale down below. Or so he thought.

Yet the fish house fortunes were about to turn. As Smith headed home, his fishing friend, Dan Kirkman, took over at the shack and it wasn’t too long before he had sweet revenge, hauling in a 42-inch, 22.5-pound northern. Kirkman quickly noticed a second hook in the big beast’s maw, with a line still attached. He started pulling in the line and when he got to the end, he found Smith’s rod and reel, no worse for wear.

It took Smith a minute or two to understand Kirkman’s excited message about his catch. “At first, I thought it was great that he had caught such a nice fish, but when I realized the whole story, I really got excited,” said Smith. “I was totally surprised. I mean, that kind of thing doesn’t happen every day.”

It left Smith in such a good mood that he didn’t even try to claim the big northern— even though he was the first one to hook it. “I let Dan have it,” he said. “But he did give me a couple nice filets.”