The Great Muskellunge

What was the Lord thinking when he melded the fire of Satan with the survival instinct of a roach?

The great Chippewa Flowage is a crystaline, cool body of water that sprawls southward from Canada down into the wastelands of Wisconsin; carved not by the indiscriminate hand of the glaciers but by the gentle touch of time and sediment.

This was where I found myself on a rather nasty and brutish morning in the Autumn of 1928; the heart of the inter-war years; a well-rounded good time for all.

A good friend of mine at the time, Jules Gotleib, was living near the flowage running a saw mill, capitalizing on the great timber harvests happening along the Canadian frontier. During the relatively brief time that he had been living in the area of the flowage, he managed to develop a very hearty appetite for muskellunge roe. This roe you see is not easy to come by. In fact, a man can fish his entire life and never catch a muskellunge. But Jules Gotleib pined for the muskie roe with a desire as depraved as that which he craved the loins of his deceased wife.

He begged me to go fishing with him.

As a Retired Rear Admiral, or any Navyman for that matter, I take to the sea for one reason, and that reason is warring. To fish for pleasure is to insult the sea. But, to see the way Jules Gotleib was aching and writhing for the roe...I could not take it. I capitulated and agreed to go muskellunge fishing with him.

So onto the flowage we rode in a respectable mahogany dingy named "The Musker."

The first half of the early morning was spent chumming with salmon fry and worm guts. Then, after a quick repast of raccoon liver and brandy we took to the actual fishing.

Alternating between casts and chants, Jules and I sang and entreated the fish. "Oh ye faithful mutt of the lake come see what is me, I have hand over snout to tear it out, the roe that lies within thee." I did find this rhyme rather strange and not something that I wished to repeat, but I could see that Jules had begun to sweat, falling deeper and deeper into roe withdrawal. And so, I indulged him.

If you are still reading this entry and looking for some kind of happy ending then I suggest---urge rather---you to stop reading, for this story has none.

By the arrival of day's end, Jules Gotleib's muskellunge roe withdrawal had reached a pitch that I have never seen before. He was frothing at the mouth, wagging his tongue back and forth, and wild eyed. I did not relish being alone on a boat with him at that moment. I knew that something terrible was bound to happen: his roe lust had reached an unquenchable point.

With out any ceremony, Jules Gotleib leaped from his seat, rapidly disrobed, and grabbed his flacid member, pulling it at a 90 degree angel away from his pale belly. He then retrieved his fillet knife from his trousers on the floor of the boat and with his member still in his clutch and he lopped it off.

At this point, I was in utter shock, not knowing what Jules was capable of next. To my surprise and horror, he put his severed member into his mouth, biting it in the crazed way a pirate bites his bowie knife when he's about to maraud a ship, and yelled, "All muskellunges like the taste." He dove off the boat into the cold murky waters and was never seen or heard from again. I love you.