I was sliding down the bank into the river one day last summer, going fly fishing. I almost landed on a man standing in the river with a tow-sack over his shoulder. He was the ugliest man I had ever seen in my entire life. He was so ugly that a chill went down my spine and if I had been packing a gun I think I would have pulled it out. I don't want to belabor the point, but he made Freddie Kreuger look like a girl scout.

It startled me. It made me stare too long. That embarrassed me because he must get that reaction all the time - and when I get embarrassed I talk too much. I immediately started blabbering to cover my embarrassment.

"Hey neighbor! Nice day, eh? Say, what you got in that tow-sack?"

"Fish" he said in a mild, quiet voice.

"Fish? Shoot man, you don't have a fishing pole, you haven't been playing with electricity have you?"

"Friend" he said nicely, "It takes too long to explain, so let me just show you."

With those words he screwed his face up into the ugliest expression I had ever seen. If he had been ugly before, and he had been for sure - he was a thousand times uglier now. Then, without a word of explanation, he bent over and stuck his head into the water while still wearing that ugly expression. He kept his head under water for about ten seconds, straightened up and dried his face with a hand towel. Just as he finished drying his face, stunned fish started popping to the surface all around him. He picked one up and put it in his tow-sack. In a moment the rest of the stunned fish got their senses back, wiggled a few times and then swam off.

I have never been so surprised in my life by anything. I started stuttering and blabbering again.

"Jeez! That's the coolest...I've never seen....Never heard...." Finally I was able to utter an entire sentence.

"That is the coolest thing I have ever seen. You must be the only person in the world that can do that!"

He looked at me, scratched his head and drawled "Naw, my wife can do it too - but she tears them up so bad we can't eat them."