Hi Mark,
When you called me on Sat., I was on Mille Lacs Lake with my wife Tina and a couple of fishing buddies. We were catching a lot of walleyes and it was basically non-stop action all day long. When you informed me of the horrific news that you had stage 4 cancer, they all saw me break down and being the good friends that they are – they supported me.
After I hung up with you, about an hour went by and we did not catch another fish. The lines were dead silent and I guess that was a good thing because I really didn’t feel like fishing anyways and I was thinking about calling it quits. I just wasn’t in the mood anymore and felt it was selfish of me to be out having fun while fishing when I had just found out that a dear friend of mine had cancer.
And then it happened… An outside planer board took off screaming behind the boat and the line started to peel off the spool. We all knew this was no walleye but it was a fish and something big! The planer board was thrashing on top of the water and it was acting more like a bobber. Whatever was at the end of this line was huge! We all worked together and finally landed this huge musky! We couldn’t believe it!!!
It’s been a few years since a musky has been in my boat while open water trolling for walleyes. It was the strangest thing… there we were catching walleyes one after another all day long and never had to wait more than a few minutes. After you called, over an hour went by and we did not catch a single fish. And then the very next fish we got was this big girl! 
By the time we got her to the boat and took a quick picture, she was really played out. I worked and worked trying to revive her and it wasn’t looking good. I then noticed that this big musky actually had a tag in her. The DNR tags a few of these and it’s very rare to catch one. The tag comes with an unique 6 digit number and you’re supposed to report it back to the DNR along with the length of the fish. It helps them monitor their growth rates, age and the location of the fish and they will send you a report of when that fish was tagged and it’s location. Since she was so played out, I thought it would be selfish of me to pull her back out of the water just to read that number and instead, I wanted her to live.
About that time, my friend took over because I was physically and emotionally exhausted – I just couldn’t help her anymore and I was so sad that we had taken her life out of pure enjoyment. I wished that we had never caught her and felt tremendous sadness. I then felt guilty because maybe if I hadn’t taken her out of the water for a picture she would have survived.
A couple more minutes passed and then she finally showed some signs of life as her pectoral fins started to flair out. My friend worked her back and forth pushing water through her gills and he was talking to her. He said “come on girl, come on girl”, and then with a big swoop of her tail she magically swam away to the dark depths below to live again. 
Mark, I’ve had some time now to reflect on this… I think it’s a sign or something and the reason we caught this big fish was because of you. I guess someone up above is telling me that all I need to do is to be there for you, keep praying for you, keep fighting with you and we can beat this evil thing called cancer. We then will swim again together to the depths below.
Thank you Mark for this beautiful fish and being such a good friend to me. Every time I look at this picture, I will think of you.
great way to support your friend!
