There are good fishing stories, and then there are the ones that make you scratch your head — and maybe pinch yourself. Al Kuronen’s day on Wah Wash Kesh Lake back in July 2018 falls squarely into the latter.
Kuronen was out trolling a worm harness across a rocky shoal, working familiar waters in the northern reaches of Ontario’s Parry Sound District. It was classic walleye country.
“I had a bite, went to set the hook, and my line snapped clean at the top eye of my rod,” Kuronen tells Wired2fish. “I probably lost close to 100 feet of line. Total bummer.”
Like most anglers, Kuronen assumed he’d simply gotten snagged in the rocks, victim of a hump jutting up from the bottom. Frustrated but not finished, he rigged up another rod and kept trolling.
“I made several more passes over that same area, not expecting anything out of the ordinary,” Kuronen said. “Just trying to get back in the rhythm.”
But then, roughly 30 minutes later, something unusual happened.
“I felt a tug — not a bite, really, more like a drag. I thought maybe I’d hooked some weed or a stick. Turned out, I’d caught the line I’d broken off earlier.”
It wouldn’t be the first time a lost rig was recovered. But what happened next turned the moment from lucky to the stuff of legends.
“I started pulling the old line in by hand, just hoping to get my harness back. But then I saw it — there was a walleye on one hook, and a brown bullhead on the other. Both still there, both hooked, just waiting.”
It was a fishing two-for-one deal that no one expects and few ever experience. The fact that both fish stayed hooked for half an hour after the break is remarkable in and of itself. But to have the angler retrieve them on a second pass? That’s the kind of moment that earns lifetime bragging rights at the bait shop.
“I got a lot of funny looks telling this story,” Kuronen admits with a laugh. “I don’t blame ‘em — it sounds made up. But it happened, and I’ll remember it like it was yesterday.”
Wah Wash Kesh Lake, known for its healthy populations of walleye, pike, and bass, delivered a memory that won’t soon be forgotten.
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