The trout was a brilliant rainbow, colors of a memorable arc on his underside, and yet, for all his wariness and guile, found he was hooked at the side of his jaw. I was proud of my catch as I looked down upon him, happy as I could be, until he looked me in the eye and said, “Let me go, Sir. Put me back in, where I belong, and I’ll tell you about the frog and the bigmouth bass. It’s the biggest story to come out of the pond in years. It’s a whopper.”

Stunned I was, knocked back on my heels, but I couldn’t tell anybody because they’d brand me as a liar, a bigmouth in my own right, a romancer in words.

I said to him, nameless as he’d be, “How do I know you’ll keep your promise?”

“I say the same thing, Sir; how can I trust you? If I tell you, you could keep me here, topside, a dry lander, a sucker for a slinky worm. And by the way, was that worm a stale worm? It had an old taste to it. Too long on the shelf, in the cooler, or in your bait box from your last trip? And by the way again, how long has it been since you fished here last, from this same place? There’s something familiar about all this. Your look, your tone of voice, and the words you use. Have you noticed?”

“Maybe it was just an old worm,” I said.

“Well, I hope you use fresher bait the next time,” he said. Like there’ll be a next time, I bet he was really saying.

I knew he was using delay tactics. And promising me a great story almost in the same breath. Hah, the nerve of him.

“I just ought to fillet you, dip you in egg yellow and corn meal, and cook you up on a camp stove,” I threatened in my deepest voice, ”trying to bribe me with the promise of a story, a whopper about the ugly frog and the big mouth bass.”

“Just as I thought,” the trout said, as he rolled over and flipped himself back into the pond, his last words being, “Writers never know where their next story is coming from, or the next review.” The last part sounded like a threat.

It can be said, one never knows who reads his last words or who remembers them.