JACKSON, WY—Wyoming angler Wyatt Mitchell recently landed a fish most anglers only dream about. “I knew this fish was special, but I had no idea how special until I took it to Jackson’s Big R Ranch & Home store to have it measured and weighed,” Mr. Mitchell said during an interview at his Wilson home. “One of the guys in the store immediately recognized the fish as the one that got away from him a few weeks earlier.”
More than just a big fish, though, Mr. Mitchell’s catch turns out to be the one that got away in every fishing story for the past four decades. After another store patron recognized the fish, the store manager contacted the Wyoming Fish and Game office, which sent Officer Jac Stephenson to verify the catch. “In my thirty-three years of service, I’d heard about this fish plenty of times, but I thought it was something that only came to life in fish stories,” Officer Stephenson said. “This fish contained the genes of every sport-fish species in our state. Its gills had developed to withstand as much as two days on dry land. That, and a set of overly developed pectoral fins allowed the fish to move from river to river as it pleased, mostly at night, eating pocket mice, voles, and pygmy rabbits during its journeys.”
As word spread across the state, other anglers shared stories of their encounters with this fish. “Shit! That’s it, for sure. That’s the one that got away two years ago on Spring Creek,” Jason Gervell told the audience at a recent meeting of Trout Unlimited’s Jackson Hole chapter. After several anglers shared similar stories, the crowd became visibly angry as the awful truth set in—no one could tell another credible story about the one that got away.
“I just wanted to hang a reminder of my catch on the wall,” Mr. Mitchell said after the meeting. “If I’d have known I’d become as unpopular as Butch Sinval when he shot the state’s only jackalope, I’d have let the damn fish get away.”
