Double Whammy

Thirteen feet beneath the bass boat, in a tea-colored void, the great fish sulked restively. A primitive alarm had gone off somewhere in its central nervous system; a survival warning, powerful but unse-lective. The great fish could not know what triggered the inner response—acute oxygen depletion, brought about by toxins in the water—but she reacted as all largemouth bass do when sensing a change in the atmosphere.

She decided to gorge herself.

Loglike, she rose offthe bottom and hung invisible beneath the floating shadow. She waited under the boat for the familiar rhythmic slapping noise, and peered through liquid glass for the friendly face of the creature who always brought the shiners. The hunger had begun to burn in her belly.

Glancing at the screen of the depth-finder, Dennis Gault said: "My God, the damn thing's right under us."

"I sure don't see it," Lanie said.

"Under the boat," her brother said. "Right there on the sonar."

The fish was so close that he didn't need to cast. He merely dropped the spinnerbait straight down, counted to twelve, and began the slow retrieve. The lure swam unmolested past the brushpile and rattled up, up, up toward the surface. Its rubber skirt shimmied, and its twin spoons twirled. Its mechanical agitation exuded the fear of the pursued, yet it did not behave like a frog or a minnow or even a crawdad. In fact, it resembled absolutely nothing in nature—yet the great fish engulfed it savagely.

Dennis Gault had never felt such a force. When the fish struck, he answered three times, jerking with all his might. The rod bowed and the line twanged, but the thing did not budge. It felt like a cinderblock.

"Sweet Jesus," Gault said. "Elaine, I've got it!"

She dropped her magazine and went fumbling for the landing net.

"No, not yet!" Her brother was panting so heavily that Lanie wondered if she should get a brown bag ready.

The great fish had begun to do something that no bass had ever been able to do to Dennis Gault—it was taking line. Not just in a few heady spurts, either, but in a sizzling streak. Gault pressed his thumb to the spool and yelped as the flesh burned raw before his eyes. The bass never slowed.

With his free hand Gault turned on the ignition and put the boat in reverse: he would back down on the beast, as if it were a marlin or a tuna.

"What should I do?" Lanie asked, moving to the back of the boat.

"Take the wheel when I say so."

Forty yards away, the fish broke the surface. Too heavy to clear the water, it thrashed its maw in seismic rage, the lure jingling in its lower lip. To Dennis Gault the freakish bass seemed as murky and ominous as a bull alligator. He couldn't even guess at the weight; its mouth looked as broad as a basketball hoop.

"Holy shit," Lanie said, dazzled.

"Here, take it." Gault motioned her to the steering wheel. "Take it straight back on top of this bitch." He stood up and stuck the butt of the rod in his belly, levering his back and thigh muscles into the fight. The fish seemed oblivious. For every foot of line Dennis Gault gained, the giant bass would reclaim two.

"Faster," Gault told his sister, who nudged the throttle. She had never driven a Ranger before, but figured it couldn't be much different from the Vette.

Motoring in reverse, the boat gradually ate up the distance between Dennis Gault and the thing on the end of his line. After several brief surges, the bass bore deep and hunkered on the bottom to regain its wind.

Gault held such faith in his expensive tackle and in his knowledge offish behavior that he felt confident tightening the drag on his reel. The purpose was to prevent the bass from running out any more line, and for any other hawg the strategy might have worked: the twenty-pound monofilament was extremely strong, the graphite rod pliant but stout. Finally, and most important to Gault's reasoning, the fish should have rightfully been exhausted after such an extraordinary battle.

Gault twisted the drag down so that nothing smaller than a Mack truck could have stolen more line. Then he began to reel.

"I think it's coming," he announced. "By God, the fucker's giving up."

The great fish bucked its head and resisted surrender, but Gault was able to lift her off the bottom. Unlike the wily old lunkers of well-traveled farm ponds and tourist lakes, this bass had never before felt the sting of the hook, had never struggled against invisible talons. She had acquired no tricks to use on Dennis Gault and his powerful noise machine; all she had was her strength, and in the bad water there was little of it left.

Gault savored the feel of the fish weakening, and a faint smile came over his face. If Dickie weren't already dead, he thought, the sight of this monster hanging at the dock would kill him. Gault checked to make sure the landing net was within reach.

Then the line went slack.

For a sickening moment Gault thought the bass had broken off, but then he figured it out. The bass was coming in fast. He reeled frenetically, trying to bring the line tight.