"I felt I needed to get rid of that ring, but I didn't want to just toss it to the bottom, pawn it, or any of that kind of thing," he said. So he ultimately decided to dispose of it the best way he knew how. He used a zip tie to attach the ring to the tail of a steelhead that he caught and released in Lake Michigan on May 4.
"I'm a fishing guide," explained the gent, "and my wife always was against me following my dreams and hated how much I fished." He went on to note that he's "convinced that ring is cursed" because, once he had gotten rid of it, "my life has been nothing less than great."
What the fisherman didn't count on, however, was that, a little more than seven weeks after releasing that steelhead, another fisherman would catch it during a lake-trout tournament on Lake Michigan. Atlhough the find caused quite an initial stir, with everyone wondering who did this and why, it didn't take long to get answers to all their questions once the story and some photos hit the local newspaper.
The fisherman behind this story seemed a bit surprised to hear the news about his fish and ring. "None of us can believe someone caught it."
Wasn't a surprise to the skipper of the boat which claimed the day's surprise catch. His first guess was that it had something to do with a divorce.
Incidentally, that same skipper agrees with the earlier assertion that the ring is cursed. "Ever since it came on my boat," he said, "I've had problems with my Glendinning engine controls, the switch to raise the helm floor to get at the engines broke, and the hose at my dock burst." That's enough to make anyone wonder, "What else can go wrong?"
Said the skipper in closing, "I think we'll mail the ring back to the owner, with no return address!"
Veteran journalist, sportswriter, and outdoors writer David Strege authored the original piece.
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