When You Tell a Bear Story... by Bucky Lewis The world is moving faster and faster every day, and time becomes more precious to people. I think this is the chief reason that hunting and fishing stories are transformed from the ordinary to the spectacular. The facts have no room in a fishing or hunting story other than to keep you up at night wondering how it should have been. Do you think people are interested when you tell them the truth: "Yeah, I spent most of the day fishing, and I caught one perch and a cold". That's why fishermen/women have the tripling rule. The formula is this; If the fish you caught is eight inches, by the time you get to shore it's sixteen, and by the time you've arrived home it's thirty two inches long. You feel like you're not wasting anyone's time and actually make folks squeal with delight and become awestruck when you instead relate the story thusly: "I was wading in the river fly fishing for ten pound bass with a specially made #3 weight pole shaved down to #1 weight with 2 pound test, (just in case I hooked onto a salmon). Suddenly a violent thunderstorm comes out of nowhere and lightning hits a huge pine on the river bank which comes crashing down on the dam, causing it to burst and sending the whole lake above it towards me while I'm standing in the middle of the river bed. As I am being swept down the river, I managed to hook a -Ohh, mustabeen abouta-33 pound steelhead. Well, this fish decides to swim downstream causing me to travel even faster in the by now class 5 rapids. Just then, a huge starving grizzly bear that had been fishing along the river bank -obviously it was starving because it had made it's way clear across the country from the Rockies to New England in search of food- was also swallowed up by the raging river. There we were, fighting for our liv;es heading for the falls. I think the name of the falls was Victoria or Niagara or something like that. Well, the bear looks at me and I looks at him and each of us at that point silently nod to each other that if we get out of this thing alive out of mutual respect for what we had both gone through together, he wouldn't make a meal out of me and I wouldn't make a rug out of him. Just as we were headed over the falls, an extremely large American Bald Eagle-with the wingspan the size of Oh,,,,,, Nantucket,-swooped out of the sky muckling on to the fish still attached to the line. As he took off again, with tremendous luck I found myself following. Had to, inasmuch as I was at this point hopelessly tangled in (whereby still holding onto) the pole. As the eagle was climbing with the fish, the line tangled in a high-tension wire. This created a swinging action below the wire causing me to head towards one of the power line towers. Just as the line snapped I lunged and grabbed the ladder on the nearest tower that was to eventually lead me safely to the ground. The bear on the other hand, having gone over the falls disappeared in the foamy turbulence below only to reemerge on his back floating down the now placid river. This appeared to make the bear content, since the river was headed in the general direction of Seattle. This plus the fact that the fish, being too heavy for the eagle's grip, fell from it's talons squarely into the jaws of the bear, which had to satisfy his hungry feelin'. So you see, THAT'S why there's no fish in my creel!" Works great, except when you want to eat fresh fish and game. Thank God for road-kill.