After a lifetime of fishing, I’ve become adept at identifying special catches. Though I’ve pulled in several catches of a lifetime in my 32 years, I recently changed the nature of my relationship with probably my best catch yet — Sarah Akbari.

Though I’m probably embarrassing her a little bit by writing this, she’s pretty great and deserves every compliment even though we broke up after about eight months together.

With me leaving Klamath Falls for a new job overseas and each of us having different dreams for the future and different family plans, we reluctantly decided to try that transition from romantic partners to friends.

Breaking up wasn’t easy on either of us, despite what Hollywood suggests, but we’ve been making a solid effort at it. At least, we thought we were, until we both acknowledged strong latent feelings for one another that didn’t just go away.

We ended up still spending time together after being broken up, playing pickleball, having dinner, walking. You know, that same stuff we did as a couple. I felt like since the relationship had changed in name, it probably should change in practice — even if I had reservations.

So I took a risk.

It was impulsive, it wasn’t planned, and I hadn’t really budgeted for it, but I did it nonetheless.

Despite the amicable nature of our breakup, Sarah was still a bit surprised when I popped the question.

In retrospect, doing it over text probably wasn’t the best idea.

Adding “No worries if not,” likely didn’t help, either.

But she didn’t say no right away.

Three little dots popped up on the screen, and I figured she was thinking about it. Over the past few months, we had broached the subject a few times. We were compatible enough that it seemed like a real possibility, but we never really discussed it in detail.

That didn’t stop me from asking her.

“Where would we even get a license?” she texted back.

Historically, you had to go in person, often with some level of ceremony, but it can be done entirely online now in most states. Sure, it cheapens the experience a bit, but it’s also way more convenient. Especially since I end up having to get a new one almost every year, and I hate waiting in lines.

To my surprise, she said yes.

Did I tell my friends and family, you ask? Well, why would I?

“Yes,” Sarah wrote back. “I’d love to go fishing with you.”

New norms

She got her license. She was now a licensed angler, and we did something as friends that we never did as a couple: went fishing.

Since we met late in the fall, dated over the winter and through an unseasonably cold and wet spring, we didn’t really have many chances to fish together beforehand. I’m careful not to take people fishing unless I know (1) we’ll catch fish, and (2) the conditions are at least tolerable. Rain, snow, sleet and frigid air temps are not the way to introduce people I care about to the sport, so I usually wait for optimal conditions where we’ll catch a lot of fish in pleasant weather.

Unfortunately, the first night we went to Topsy to try and catch some black crappie was on the tail end of some dramatic shifts in flows ramping down from the annual “flushing flow” that theoretically helps salmon downstream. This absolutely wrecks the fishing in reservoirs along the path, and we caught just a single bass.

Still, it was Sarah’s first fish in ages, and she released a great smile moments before releasing the fish, and it took all of my self-control not to kiss that smile off her face, but I held strong.

We tried fishing again after flows had been more consistent, and though it was still not as great as I’d hoped, we did better on the second attempt, each landing about a dozen crappie on that warm summer evening.

Our third fishing trip took us to a small spring habitat in search of native blue chubs and sculpins. Using tenkara rods with tiny tanago hooks, Sarah quickly figured out how to slay the minnows in the waning light.

We switched to headlamps and watched the sunset as night fell.

In the near-dark, we began catching sculpins. On her first drop, she caught a Klamath marbled sculpin — the rarer of the two options where we were fishing.

She added several slender sculpin thereafter, holding them in front of her slender frame with another radiant smile.

A part of my heart broke at that moment. I thought she’d been my catch of a lifetime, but wanting different things forced us to release one another. It was awful, but it was probably for the best.

The chance to go fishing, though, was beautiful because it reinforced the idea that had been repeating itself in the back of my mind since we first met at a farmer’s market: she was a catch. Maybe not my catch of a lifetime, but some incredibly lucky guy will get to pose with Sarah one day, exchange vows, raise kids and live in the house with the garden she will keep, and it will be storybook. Some small part of me will always be a little bit jealous of that guy, but a much larger part of me will be abundantly happy for the woman who caught Luke Ovgard more thoroughly than anyone before her.