Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

Fishy stories among the best

As a reporter, editor and whatever else title gets added this week, my job is to get things right, and 100-percent accurate. From oddly spelled names of first-generation Latvian descendants to precise amounts of trivial facts and figures, I'm trusted to give exact information, without any margin for discussion.

Which is precisely why I love fish stories. The bigger the better, and if you don't have proof it actually happened, that's cool by me. It's the one time in which accuracy doesn't matter to me, so I relish in those whoppers and tall tales. I love hearing them, I love telling them, and sometimes, the truth just seems to be a hurdle that you have to overcome along the way to a spectacular story.

When it comes to fish stories, I'm as guilty as the next guy of being a big fat liar every now and then. Since I'm saddled with the burden of being accurate all the time at work, on the banks of the creek, I'll let myself drift a bit. Of course, like every fish story ever told, the basic idea of every fish story I tell is rooted in truth, but the details are what makes things interesting. For example, I caught a 40-pound king a few years ago, and it was 40 pounds for about three weeks, until my brother-in-law's pictures were developed. There, plain as day, you'll find me holding that salmon with my digital scale reading 38 pounds, 6 ounces. Forty sounds so much better than 38-6, though -- the camera always adds weight, and what is a pound and a couple ounces, anyway?

Now that it's Memorial Day weekend, the stories are starting to really pick up steam. Just the other day, I was in 3 Rivers Fly and Tackle, where I usually go every other Thursday (guess which day is payday?) to blow all of my paycheck, some of my wife's paycheck and half our daughter's college fund on glowing Spin-N-Glos and enormous lures with odd names like "Wiggle Warts." At least they rattle. Anyway, I casually mentioned to Mike, the fish story czar of the Valley, that I had a friend who mentioned to me that he had a buddy who knew a guy whose coworker caught a 52-pound king down on the Deshka.

These guys are pros at sniffing out the real stories and the real, well, fish stories, for a lack of a better term. Turns out they've heard it -- they hear them all -- but the fish has ranged from 52 to 63 pounds, it was evidently caught by a doctor nobody knows, and ironically, no official king salmon derby weigh-in location has a record of the fish. Isn't that amazing?

Still, in the back of my mind, I like to think the story is at least three-quarters true.

Maybe it was a 35-pound king caught by an unemployed restroom janitor who didn't have a derby ticket, but it's still sounds better the other way, so that's what I'm going with on this one.

The art of hyperbole is never more apparent than in fish stories. Hyperbole happens to be one of my favorite literary devices, and not just because the word "hyperbole" is fun to say. Giant halibut are as "big as barn doors" and fresh salmon are "dime-bright chromers."

Exaggeration is especially crucial when telling the big tales, but you have to make the stories believable, or your credibility wanes. When you finally do hook that dream fish, nobody is going to believe it when you tell them.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the image in your mind of a giant fish is worth a few extra pounds a few hours later around the campfire.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor. He bet his editor he could work the word "bailiwick" into a column. He just won that bet.