by Michael Mccormick

Created on: June 27, 2008   Last Updated: May 17, 2010

I caught a fish once purely by freak accident. I landed on top of that unsuspecting salmon. It must have thought I was a giant osprey from the direction of my attack. This story definitely falls under the fishing without a pole category.

It was the early Fall of 1968, I remember it being a warm September day. My friends and I decided that we needed to ride our bikes down to the Mollalla River in Canby, Oregon after getting all hot and sweaty playing work-up on the baseball diamond.

So with our mitts draped over the handle bars and our baseball bat cinched to the frame of my bike with my leather belt, we headed down to old Knights Bridge. Just up river from the bridge (about a hundred yards) was an old rope swing that dangled high from a giant oak tree.

Jeff Prescott, Joey Dominick, Steve Miles and I loved that spot. From high up on the bank you could sit in the cool shade of that oak tree and look far down the vast expanse of river rapids beyond our favorite swimming hole.

We would literally spend entire days enjoying that cool river on a hot day. The rope we would swing from was a big fat rope. It must have been three or more inches in diameter. We had no idea who hung it from that big branch or how long it had been there. We just knew it was there for us to enjoy.

Time after time, we would sit on that big knot tied at the end of the rope and take that long swing that spanned almost two thirds the width of that river. At the precise moment, we would let go and splash down, dropping maybe ten feet into the water. It was a little scary for kids who hadn't tried it yet, but once you got the courage to take that plunge, it was awesome.

Using my boy scout pocket knife, I made my pants into a pair of cutoffs, considering I had already ripped out the knee sliding on the baseball diamond. My buddies borrowed my knife and did likewise, even though their pants were not damaged.

On that particular day, it was on my third time of splashing down, climbing the bank and drying off that I had an unexpected thing happen. This time when I splashed down, I hit a fish. I landed smack down on top of a huge Chinook salmon that was trying to navigate up the river toward the rapids. It didn't feel so great hitting that fish with my knee, but I came out a lot better than the fish did. The impact of my cannonball landing instantly killed that fish.

At first, I didn't really know what I had hit. I thought it might be a floating log. While I was writhing in the water from the pain of

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