Paul's big fish

Tales from the backyard…  While working in Alaska I coached my son’s little league team, and on it was one of my sons best friends, Paul, very small for his age but a great little athlete.  One day they asked to go fishing and I said sure as long as his mom said it was okay, it was.  So we loaded the boat after practice one night and began trolling the shoreline.  Almost at once both poles got hits and they dashed back to set the hooks.  My son’s fish got off almost at once, but Paul’s was on for the long haul.  I kept telling him to keep the tip of the pole up, which worked at the beginning, but after about 10 minutes he was tiring, not so much the fish, and his arms began to sag.  He kept leaning back further and further trying in vain to keep the tip up high and I remember at one point, the pole was pointing straight back over the transom and he was leaning back, 6 inches above and almost prone to the bottom of the boat.  He was so tired, he finally let Tom give him some help and he landed the big salmon.  I weighed it at 27 lbs. (almost half of his weight) then hooked it on the stringer I used and flipped it in the water.  The stringer broke, and off the fish swam.  I felt so bad.  We had no other hits that night so I gave him a Mulligan and he did catch a nice one the next time out.