Responding to Hugh Gebutt in re: the theory that some fish are destined to be caught, no matter what, and some are destined not to be caught, no matter what. I don't know of a third option, but after losing so many fish where I thought I did everything right, and catching so many while suffering an acute bout of cranio-rectal insertion, that's about the best I've come up with.

Along those lines, here's another one. On a trip up to Soldotna along with my brother-in-law, we went halibut fishing out of Deep Creek. My brother-in-law hooked into one that the skipper got excited about, which I took as a positive sign. It was like he was trying to pull the plug out of the ocean floor. Then, all of a sudden, his line snaps - somewhere in mid-line. Heavy sigh.

While the skipper is rerigging my brother-in-law, I reel up to check my bait, and as the rotation was explained to us, I went to the back of the line, where my brother-in-law had been and I let back down in the spot he had just vacated.

I hadn't been on the bottom more than a minute, when I hook into something huge. We land this one. It's 200 pounds. After we shoot it, harpoon it, gaff it, lasso, it and pull it in over the rail, we notice that it has another leader and cannon ball weight hanging out of its mouth, besides mine. It was the skipper's rig that my brother-in-law had been using.

So, I guess my philosophical thunderbolt is not so much a statement of the ultimate fate of fish, but the fate of a fish once you hook it. Some are destined to be caught, no matter what, and others are destined to get away, no matter what.