Water flowed through a small spillway into the stream, sending a variety of fish species from the drainage lake above through its passage. I pitched a black and yellow marabou jig tipped with a leech into the spillway’s small tail-waters, letting the current do the rest of the work for me. Moments later, I felt a jolt that changed my life forever. This ten year old boy caught his first ever smallmouth bass. It wasn’t large, maybe 2-pounds at most. But on light action gear with 4 lb. line in current, it felt and fought like a giant. It was the greatest fight from any fish I had experienced at that point in life. A life-changing moment occurred.   One Fish Two Fish Brown Fish…. A quarter-century ago, my obsession began. In the summer of 1996, exactly 26 fishing seasons ago. The site of my first ever smallmouth isn’t any larger or much different from Dr. Seuss’s fictional hot-spot, McElligot’s Pool. It exactly was that, with the joy of it never knowing what you might catch. From it, we routinely pulled muskies, northerns, walleyes, and big panfish. The pool and its small stream located in the backwoods of Oneida County, Wisconsin is near and d