Last week I found a photo album at my folks’ house filled with our family’s outdoor trophies. My Dad’s eleven point buck from the mid 1980s, a smallmouth I caught when I was four on Wisconsin’s Chippewa flowage.

There were so many intense and clear memories in that book. Flipping through the photos I came across one that kicked me in the gut. How could I have forgotten this one for so long?

In high school, I didn’t run with any one crowd exclusively. My friends cut across the entire complex social strata that was Ottawa Township High. Jocks, nerds, intellectuals, drama kids, shop guys, the innately popular, the hopelessly awkward; every group represented and interconnected by either our love for playing hockey or fishing.

Those four years, a blink in my eye now, covered a lot of ground. We were trying to figure out life while forming connections with each other that are rare in adulthood. In fact, looking back on my high school friends, I now realize how unlikely it was that we spent so much time together despite having so little in common. 

But fishing is no little thing and my friendship with Scott Derbort was solely fueled by our pursuit of fish. Absent that, we were dissimilar. He loved sports. I only cared about the NHL. He chewed tobacco (and had the spit bottles to prove it). I ate bags of Combos from the Amoco station. He swore eloquently and naturally. My cursing was reserved for times of great peril. He was short on words. I could usually find something to say about anything. Regardless, Scott and I spent hours plying the waters of rivers and ponds and quarries together.

November 18, 1997 was a school day for me. I was in college and Scott was already in the workforce. The walleye were biting on the Illinois River so we made plans to fish below the dam in Marseilles that morning before my classes started. We pulled jigs through an eddy on the northern side of the river where the frothing waters of the Illinois spun out after surging beneath the gates of the dam. Standing atop the 15 foot concrete retaining wall, we covered most of the eddy while routing our casts around various chunks of wood and debris that cycled through the slack water.

Then Scott hooked something big.

We thought it was a submerged log until it began moving upstream (something logs rarely do). It bulldogged and balked against his spinning gear and six pound test line. Scott maintained pressure and as the seconds passed, we began to think he’d hooked up with a large sheephead or snagged a golden imperial (a tongue-in-cheek slang we used for common carp). Whatever it was seemed too big to be a walleye.

I have no idea how much time passed but I’m sure I’ve never stared so hard at river water in my life anticipating what was on his line. Eventually Scott was able to lower his rod and get a few cranks in, then a lift, then again until a hooked beak broke the surface of the stained water. The white grub tail from Scott’s jig dangled precariously from the unidentified beast’s maw. The rest of the fish soon surrendered and lay on its side in full view just below the water.

We were confused and panicked. It was big, but what was it? A salmon, a trout? At that point it didn’t matter because we had no way of lifting it up the retaining wall. I ran down the bank and found an older guy who was fishing and brought him over to show him our predicament. I asked if he’d drive over to the local bait shop to get a net that we could lower down to hoist the fish up.

“Holy shi**! Yeah, I’m going!” 

He left his gear there and sped off to the bait shop while Scott kept pressure on his trophy. These were some of the longest five minutes of our lives waiting for that guy to return and hoping the fish wouldn’t break Scott’s line or bend the hook.

The older fisherman returned and we landed the fish then took it over to the bait shop to have it identified. An IDNR biologist was called in and confirmed that it was a Chinook salmon that weighed in at over 11 pounds. A rare catch and the biologist thought it had probably come in from Lake Michigan and got stuck behind the dam trying to get back. 

As I sat on my parent’s couch last week looking at that picture, I was transported 18 years back to that bright frigid November morning on the bank of the Illinois. It was an unlikely catch with an unlikely friend, one whom I lost contact with when I transferred away to school and ultimately moved out of state.

In 2010 Scott passed away. He was just 32 years old. Though we hadn’t spoken in years, at the time I felt a great sense of loss – a loss that came rushing back when I flipped open that page in the photo album. Scott and I were fishing buddies: a type of friendship that doesn’t care about social standing, or career, or what car you drive – just that you can get to the water often. We were driven, both of us, by fish and by fishing all the while still trying to get a handle on life. Those were good years.

In a way I feel like this piece is desperately inadequate in describing the bond between two high school buddies who loved to fish, though I believe I am in good company when it comes to the understated. Written in Scott’s obituary from July 2010, among the obligatory facts and family names is one excruciatingly stark statement. At the time, its simplicity and depth made me smile despite my sadness.

“He was an avid fisherman.”