Homer Liles was an avid angler. He owned four boats, thirty four rods, twenty six reels, thirty thousand lures, and every accessory known to man for the art of fishing artificial baits. His fishing library contained some five hundred covers, plus the twenty eight subscriptions to fishing magazines. Needless to say, Homer was a well-to-do single man.
     There wasn't a day that went by that he wasn't out on the water making an attempt to hold some member of the genus micropterus in his hand, with his favorite species being the salmoides, or old bucket mouth, as Homer affectionately called them, when the name wasn't hawg, rascal, lurker, whopper, big momma, or monster. While the largemouth bass, northern or Florida subspecies alike, was his favorite catch, he also spent ample time pursuing the Neosho and northern smallmouth (bronze bomber), northern, Wichita, and Alabama spotted bass, the two subspecies of red eye bass, the Suwannee bass and the little elusive Guadalupe bass. Homer knew the feel and subtleties of each with at least a dozen of each species in sixteen states to his credit. He'd lost count on the largemouths and smallmouths. 'Thousands' was a paltry attempt to enumerate his battles with the two genera.
     Homer was not just a fishing nut. He was also heavily interested in aquatic ecology. Botany, entomology, food chains, chemistry, anything to do with the water in which fish lived. He understood the factors of growth rate, fertility, pollution, and more to the finest nuances.
     This is not to say that his mind was always in the water. Homer had other interests. He knew all about threads, glues, resins, closed cell foam, plastic production, characteristics of steel production and rate of corrosion, vinyl compounds, plus he could identify any bird feather at a glance. All of these had to do in one way or another with hook making, rod making, fishing line making, lure making, and fly tying.
     It could be safely said that Homer was obsessive about being an expert authority on all aspects of fishing. To his knowledge, there were only three species of fish from which he had yet to remove a hook, saltwater and fresh. Homer was a hopeless no-good.
     This day, Homer was out in his belly boat, a top of the line float tube, wearing neoprene waders and reversed swim fins, sporting a nine foot IM6 eight weight fly rod, variable drag palming fly reel, and an eight weight wet tip floating fly line, with a twelve foot 1x leader, two feet of 2x tippet, tied to a Spelunker's Mother streamer on a weighted barbless 3x long heavy wire forged hook in bronze finish, complete with a nylon loop weedguard. He was working a falldown at the edge of the channel of the nine acre lake, considering digging into his forty nine pocket shorty vest for a different fly when he felt the twitch of a strike. He used the down sweep hook set and felt the first tug of battle.
     He kicked back with his fins, with his rod high to put pressure on the line, and coaxed the fish up out of the water-logged horizontal tree trunks, where his opponent might wrap the leader around a branch and break off. He saw the line rise towards the fish, indicating that it was coming to the surface to attempt to dislodge the hook above the surface where resistance to movement was far less. This was a trick of the black bass that he knew all too well. He stripped line from the rod in four long yanks and dropped the rod to the water. When the fish broke the surface, he swept the rod to the side, putting a bend in the long flexible fly rod just above the water. This put the fish off balance and forced it back down away from the danger zone. Homer smiled at the precision of his manipulations. This bucketmouth was as good as in his grasp.
     He kept the pressure on the fish, giving line only when the fish made its characteristic short powerful runs, and only when the pull neared the four point five pound test strength of the tippet. With a palomar knot at the terminal point and a surgeon's knot at the tippet to leader knot, he was confident and saavy in knowing exactly when to release the line and for how long. When he had four feet of fly line left beyond the rod tip, he tucked his feet up under him to avoid giving the tired fish a last chance at breaking off.
     He raised the rod and brought the fish to the surface and immediately inserted his thumb into the fishes mouth, pressing on its tongue and pulling the jaw open. The two pound bass went slack, as usual. He slipped the barbless fly from the corner of the mouth and held him up for inspection.
     "Well little largemouth, you put up quite a fight for one your size."
     "Peas aunt eet meh." the fish replied.
     Homer nearly lost his grip. "What?" he questioned, shaking his head. He'd heard plenty of croakers and drum and grunts and sheepsheads and catfish make noises before, but never a bass.
     "Hi sthed, peas aunt eet meh. Itch heard tuh tak wif a tum in yer mouf. Peas yet meh gue."
     Homer shifted from the mouth grip to the tail and belly support.
     "Hey, thanks. You have quite a grip there. Please let me go. Please don't eat me."
     "I'm not going to eat you. I don't eat fish. I'm strictly catch and release."
     "Whew! Am I glad to hear that! So let me go."
     "I'm not so sure. I've never caught a fish that talked to me before."
     "Me and my big mouth."
     "How can you talk? You don't have lungs or vocal cords."
     "Must you humans understand how everything works? Can't you accept a few things on faith?"
     "Will you grant me three wishes?"
     "Wishes? Are you nuts? If I could grant wishes, I'd be using them on myself right now to get away from you. I can't stay out of the water indefinitely. I'll drown."
     "But. . . .
     "Look, put me back in the water and I'll stick around and shoot the currents with you."
     "Currents?"
     "Okay, breeze, if you like, air breather."
     "But I want others to hear you talk."
     "Not a chance. You keep me and that's the last you ever hear from me. I'm not going to set myself up as a freak show. I'll see that people will think that you're nutso."
     "You won't swim off?"
     "I'm a bass, bucko. I'm always good on my word." It's gill flaps flared widely.
     "You promise?"
     "Yes. Put me back in the water. I'm feeling faint.
     "Well, okay."
     Homer returned the fish to the water. It vanished. Homer felt immediate panic and very dumb. But thirty seconds later, the fish surfaced five feet away.
     "Ah. Much better. I wish that you hadn't grabbed my tail. You removed some of my protective slime. I hope that I don't get sick."
     "Sorry."
     "What's done is done. Don't overdo it. Look, you could do me a favor. There are some really big fish in this lake, and they cause me all kinds of grief. Mean and nasty, they are. Always looking to boss someone out of their way. I could tell you where they're hiding and you could catch them and eat them."
     "I told you that I don't eat them."
     "Okay. Transplant them to a different lake, then. You sure are a wimp, for something so big."
     "How big are they?"
     "Several over ten pounds. Big lunkers. One must go nineteen or twenty."
     "A state record!"
     "Yeah. But you'll never catch her without my help. Too wise for the likes of you unassisted."
     "Sure. Show me where she is."
     "You'd better go get a boat and a heavy action baitcasting rig. She'd make a fool out of you with what you have there. Hey, why don't you use that thing to catch me something to eat? I'm hungry. That's why I bit your fly. Tie on a small nymph and catch me something that I can swallow."
     Homer complied with the fish's directives and caught half a dozen small sunfish of various species. These he stunned and dropped in the water after removing them from the hook of the fly. The bass engulfed them greedily, belching out a fog in satisfaction.
     "Ah. That was good. Now go get a reel with forty pound test on it, and bring a spinning outfit to catch some bait. I'll meet you down at the dock. Bring your boat and some big corks and weights for the line. Strong hooks."
     Homer was finally convinced that the fish would be there, so he went for the jon boat with the forty pound thrust trolling motor attached. To his surprise, since he had started to doubt himself, the fish was there waiting at the put-in site.
     "See, I told you I'd be here." was all that was said until Homer was out on the water.
     "Now start off and catch some of those six inch shoreliners. That's Big Momma's favorite snack."
     Homer had half a dozen on a stringer in ten minutes and set out to position himself quietly just off of the deep section of the main creek. Under the fish's guidance, he rigged the seven foot flipping rod with forty pound test with a large sliding bobber and an ounce of lead and 5/0 forged hook. This he lip-hooked the small bass that was first on the stringer. He cast it to the bass. It caught the bobber in its mouth and positioned it exactly, then swam back to Homer. "All set. She's curious, but she takes her own time deciding. Be ready."
     Homer waited half an eternal minute, then the float sank swiftly out of sight in the relatively clear water. The line went tight and Homer set the hook with a hard practiced impulse. He scored securely and put the pressure on to begin lifting the fish. That was Homer's big mistake. Actually, Homer's big mistake was believing what the fish told him.
     What took the bait wasn't a twenty pound bass. It was a ninety six pound flathead catfish. Homer didn't let go of the reel until it was far too late. No matter what the fish, Homer seldom gave up until it was too late. Sometimes several minutes afterward. He was that kind of angler.
     What made him let go was a lack of breath and harsh contact with a submerged tree trunk. He broke surface sputtering, wiping his face so that he could gulp air. When he opened his eyes, the surface of the lake was covered with fish, and each was laughing at him.
     He made his way back to the boat and climbed in with the sunfish pecking at his exposed flesh. His face was as red as a spectacular sunset. He motored to the dock, got in his truck, and headed home.
     As soon as he was presentable, he drove to the feed store and bought one hundred fifty pounds of five percent rotenone. He brought it to the lake and spread in about the water after wetting the powder. The fish came back up to the surface, but this time, they weren't laughing.
     Homer never went fishing again.