The big one

by Mauro Fadda
(Germany)

I usted to go trout fishing with my grandfather once a year to the Ranco Lake in the south of Chile. At the entrance of the beautiful hotel we arrived after a 10 to 12 hour journey, there was a wooden cartel with the prayer of the fisherman:

"Oh Lord, allow me to catch such a big fish, that I don't need to lie when I tell about it"

Every time we passed in front of the cartel my grandfather told me that one day one of us would get the big beast, and that in the past some 7 kg trouts were catched in that place.

Many years after my grandfather died, I continued to go trout fishing with my dad, and further to the south, to the far and untouched region of Patagonia.

After one hour of hard fight one 21st of December on the Palena river and one and a half km of pulling downstream, I decided to step to the shore and to get this animal out of the water. It was a 19,1 kg Coho salmon, which stamped a long smile on my face.