Big fish stories from secret agents

The other day I was talking to a fishing pal, the redoubtable Linus J. Scrimshaw, who after his career with a government agency so secret that nobody other than the president, the speaker of the house, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, the undersecretary of the Interior For The Procurement Of Paper Clips, the director of the Bureau Of Explaining Unusually Stupid Projects, the editors of the Washington War-Whoop and Gazette-Hyphenated, the guy who runs the newsstand at 16th and L streets, Linus’ great-aunt Katherine out in Michigan — anyway, it’s a really secretive outfit.“It puts the ‘sub’ in ‘sub rosa,’” Linus likes to say as he sits on his porch in the Catskills, taking apart and reassembling his XK907 Discombobulator Ray, blindfolded and with outtakes from early rounds of “American Idol” blasting from the CD player (to simulate battlefield conditions).Anyhoo, Linus is a heck of a fly-fisherman and he was confronted with a terrible dilemma a couple weeks ago.He was fishing the Esopus Creek, behind the Shandaken (N.Y.) Town Hall. There is a deep pool back there, one that doesn’t get massively rearranged after the spring floods because the remnants of an old bridge provide a bulwark.Linus was fishing an itty-bitty, size 16 Light Cahill wet fly, with a single piece of split shot to get it down, and not really expecting anything.“Then I got hung up on a log, and I thought, ‘Dang.’” Linus really says things like “Dang.” After decades of facing down the world’s shadiest characters and surviving perilous situations, he doesn’t need to prove anything.“I was gonna go in and try to get the fly, but it started to move. I thought, ‘Dang, that’s no log.’”Linus fought the fish and brought it in.It was a magnificent brown trout. “Thirty inches,” said Linus. I must have looked skeptical, because he waved the XK907 at me in a vaguely threatening manner.“Yessir, 30 inches, that’s a mighty fine fish, yes indeedy,” I said, following my policy of never arguing with retired secret agents, especially retired secret agents who can listen to “American Idol” outtakes for hours without any visible distress.“And you’ll never guess what happened,” continued Linus. “I foul-hooked the dang thing. Dagnabbit.”(When Linus trots out the 19th-century frontier slang, he is seriously disturbed.)Turns out he had hooked the trout in the dorsal fin. “I thought it was swimming kinda funny,” he mused. This was a serious ethical dilemma. The trout did not just get hooked on this small fly by accident. The cunning and guile of the angler created the situation. The fish responded. It wasn’t Linus’ fault the trout, apparently nearsighted, got himself hooked up top instead of in the jaw. Why shouldn’t he keep this splendid brown trout and have it mounted?Plus — there was nobody around. Who would know?“I would know,” said Linus. I have foul-hooked my share of fish. I don’t keep many to begin with, and I would never keep one so acquired. It’s not fair. It’s not sporting.And it is important to keep the proper perspective. As Paul O’Neil indicates, the odds are rather lopsided in the angler’s favor. He should play fair.I expressed this sentiment to Linus.“Yep,” he replied. “But dang.”