The One that got away!

This past Tuesday I headed down to a small pond near an industrial park nearby my apartment that rests between two one-way roads.  This is the epitome of urban fly fishing.  The real purpose of this pond is for rain run-off but I've caught a couple large sunfish with my son Zack on a cheesy Spiderman reel and crappy bait.  I was surprised to catch sunfish in the first place but I have since caught some nice sized LMB as well.  Here's a satellite image of the area via Google maps.  There are various small ponds like this in this part of the city.

The sunfish were active this night and I quickly caught a couple sunfish on an olive streamer Ben tied for me a couple weeks ago.  Just after releasing a catch I had a solid hit...A VERY SOLID HIT!  I knew immediately that this was quite possibly the largest fish that I'd ever hooked.  It slowly swam out to the middle of the pond and after taking my slack it spun out my reel too.  I applied some manual drag.  Then it stopped and wouldn't budge.  I gave it a couple strong tugs, waited a half a minute then tugged some more.  Thinking that it had burrowed into a hold and might need some time to come back out I tried to be patient.  Worried about the flex on the rod I grabbed my line and gave it a firm pull.  Slack!  Dang.  I lost it!...Come on!  Seconds later a beaver broke the surface in the same spot where my fish had disappeared.  A beaver?  I know what you're thinking because I couldn't believe it either, but I have seen something swim across the surface and I have heard them slap their tails down before a dive.  I even checked online and found a couple recent articles about beavers causing some problems in the DFW metroplex.  I'm not sure if it took a nibble on my streamer or if I snagged in the back while I stripped it in--I hope it's the later.  Even if I had pulled it to the surface I'm not sure what I would have done.

 Believe it or not it happened.  I'm not sure if I'm glad this one got away or not.  If it wasn't a beaver it was a freaking huge largemouth that I will catch again some day...