Below, through the surface of the lazy current, the world’s largest fish hovered , an enormous grey shadow a few inches off the sand bottom. A short debate followed, ending in the judgement that the big northern was at least fourteen feet long and weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of a Quarter Horse. We dropped magazines and bolted for our fishing rods which were by the back door, already loaded with daredevils. I snatched up my Assorted Flies making sure the Blue Marauder was with them. Once on the bank we tried every casting technique we knew-- Figure-eight; Bombs Away; Nose Drag, Tail Drag, Herky-jerky Dying Minnow --but the leviathan would have none of it, probably because he had spent the night before dining on newly hatched ducklings. In frustration, we commenced to hatching ideas. It wasn’t long before we had a terrific one.

We’d net the son of a bitch.

We grabbed a pair of 5-foot nets from the cabin, and “fanned out.” Billy went upstream and I moved a dozen yards downstream in front of the fish’s snout. Then, just before slipping into the waist-deep water, in a crystalline moment of pure eight year-old inspiration, I shook the Blue Marauder out of its plastic package and hooked it onto the end of the net bag. Then Billy waded downstream as we began to execute a slow, pulse-pounding pincher movement.

It is unclear what motivated the world’s largest fish to move. Perhaps, his evil eyes caught sight of Billy nearing him from the rear and he was annoyed. I like to think those evil eyes suddenly fixed on the Blue Marauder. Whatever it was, the pike came to life. A green freight train, he pulled slowly out of the station , then began picking up speed. Incredibly, though there were a good ten yards of river on either side of me, he barreled straight ahead, straight into the net, and straight into the Marauder. Then he lost his temper. The river boiled up as he tore at the netting, his tail-third, which could not fit in the net, cracked the surface mightily. I was sure he was going to destroy the net and then turn on me, smashing me into watery oblivion just like Moby Dick had done to Gregory Peck.

“I can’t hold him!” I screamed, but suddenly Billy was there, and he slapped his net over mine. Together we hauled the thrashing pike downstream and into shore. It required all we had to drag him from the river and up onto a section of flat beach, and there we three lay, all gasping for breath, stunned what had just happened.

Old Evil Eyes as we would call him afterwards, was as long as either of us and, judging by the effort it had taken to beach him, weighed over twenty-five pounds. His tail was bigger than two young hands, and we agreed his teeth were as large and deadly as Indian arrowheads. His black, red-rimmed deathless eyes were easily a foot apart; one bore into us and seemed to ask, “Well, what’s it going’ to be now. boys?”

Billy and I looked at each other. As best friends do, we calculated with a single mind. Old Evil Eyes would assure us of central billing at dinner for the next few nights. We’d probably get our pictures in the Big Bay newspaper. One ornery old carnivore would be gone, and a lot of duckling would sleep sounder for it. And just think: dragged down to the Store, that one single, malignant pike would probably tip the scales in favor of the two genuine hunting knives that floated beneath the surface of the glass top showcase.

But that was not what was going to happen. Two young boys to whom catching and killing was the natural order of the Universe, shared a single epiphany: we had counted coup like the Indian braves of old, and now Old Evil Eyes was going into the Lake. We wanted no business of determining his--or our-- future. We wanted Evil Eyes free to float like a U-boat in our river of memories forever. So we dragged him downto the Lake and waited until he untangled himself from the shredded nets. He hung immobile. He pouted. The water began to dissolve the sand caked to his side. Then with a languorous flip of his tail he slipped away from us and into perpetual mystery, my Blue Marauder lodged squarely in his forehead.

In the fall, Billy’s family moved out East and and he slipped away from me. Not that I have tried very hard to find him over the years. I don’t know where he is now, or who he is, how many kids he has or hasn’t, whether or not he went through a messy divorce or several career changes....and that’s fine. No need for a reunion. For all I know, Billy still goes to the Huron Mountain Club in the summer and scans Lake Superior for a sign of Old Evil Eyes who by now must have grown into a sinister Free Willy.

Billy, Evil Eyes, and the hundreds of trout I have caught on more refined flies than the Blue Marauder, were just too good to keep, and so are just as perfect now as they were when I first touched them.