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having an attack. I was ready to throw in the towel when the fish, which appeared to be as exhausted as I was by this time, swam directly into the net. Apparently it had thrown in the towel just seconds before I could. I held the net up so I could admire the huge fish and was relieved to see it wasn't a hardhead. Shining in the sun's glare, it was a beautiful shade of red and had the distinctive black dot on its tail that Milo had explained would indicate it was a redfish.
    My next realization was I'd waited too long before setting the hook. The redfish had swallowed it nearly to its tail, it seemed. I could have cared less about retrieving the hook, though. I was heading straight back to the boat with my incredible catch. After the guys admired my fish and congratulated me on my remarkable angling skills, one of them could worry about the hook.
    I cut the line with my pliers and with the hook still embedded in the fish's belly, I put the redfish on my stringer to ensure it didn't get away. If I'd thought all the cords, net, bait bucket and fishing line were a mess before, I knew it'd now take me a good half hour to get everything untangled when I got back to the boat. At this point, I was wrapped up like a mummy in an Egyptian antiquities museum. I scooted an inch or two at a time, in fear of being stung by a stingray as I was sinking to the bottom of a ten-foot-deep pot hole. With no shark sighting to provide motivation, it took me twice as long to get back to the boat as it had taken me to get from the boat to the spot where I'd been mired in the mud for hours.
    * * *
    "Pretty, isn't it?" Milo asked as he held my redfish up for Rip and me to admire. Within seconds he'd removed the hook with a pair of long needle nose pliers, slapped the fish down on a measuring table along the rim of his boat, and let it slide over the side back into the water. In one fluid motion my fish was gone. Like an apparition, it disappeared from sight in a flash.
    "What the hell?" I exclaimed in surprise, and then repeated louder, in anger. "What the hell? You just tossed my trophy redfish overboard! You pitched it out like it was chopped liver!"
    "Yeah, it's called 'catch and release,'" he replied. "Besides, a redfish has to be at least twenty inches long to be a keeper. It'd be illegal to not release your nineteen and three-quarter incher, and the penalties are steep if you get caught with an undersized game fish."
    I couldn't catch my breath for a few seconds as I struggled to come to grips with the fact my fish was probably a mile away from the boat by then, and Rip hadn't even had time to use his phone to take a photo of me proudly displaying it.
    No fish, no photo. All I had left was a bladder about to explode like a water balloon thrown from a third-story balcony.
    When I finally calmed down and accepted the fact my redfish wasn't as remarkable a catch as I'd imagined, I turned to the men and asked, "So, how many keepers did you guys catch?"
    "Not a bite all day," Rip responded, obviously more than a little disappointed. "Well, except for when Milo hooked what he thought was a stingray by the way it fought. Fortunately, the line got cut when the fish steered it into a small reef of oyster shells, so he didn't have to mess with getting it off the hook."
    "Oh, so my thousand-dollar fish was the best catch of the day," I boasted.
    "Yeah, I guess so. But Milo's going to take us a ways out into the Gulf, where he and Cooper go spear-fishing for red snapper. They fish right by an oil rig where the snapper tend to hang out. He said we'd give it an hour or so using cut bait and head home if we don't have any luck there."
    "Oh, jeez. Another hour out here?" My tone made it clear I wasn't thrilled about the prospect. My bladder was even less thrilled.
    "You had fun catching that redfish didn't you, honey?" Rip asked, as Milo stored a few loose items in storage compartments so they wouldn't blow out of the boat.
    "Of course I did, Rip," I replied. "But