Kid Hooks Long One With 5-Iron, Tees Off Pros

With his last breath, Captain Ahab subdued Moby Dick with a harpoon. Spokane’s Tanner Grant decided the remnants of a golf club would be his best bet fishing on Sunday.

Grant caught a 5-pound, 22-inch German brown trout on the dock at Rainbow Cove Resort at Clear Lake west of Spokane using a broken 5-iron that he had found in his mother’s back yard a year ago.

Grant, a 16-year-old student at Lewis & Clark High School, was forced to use ingenuity after he left his fishing rod and tackle box at his father’s house in Seattle.

“I made my reel out of an old coat hanger and ran a 25-foot line through some old loops and hooks that I found in a junk drawer. It took me about two hours to rig it all together.”

According to Tanner, the only thing stranger than catching a fish with a golf club was the weird expressions on the faces of the men around him when he caught the fish.

“It was great. These guys are out there with hundreds of dollars of equipment and all of this high-tech stuff, and no one was catching a thing.

“I finally got hold of the fish and started reeling it in through the coat hanger. One guy looked at me and said: ‘I can’t believe it. I’ve got all this stuff, and you come out here with a golf club and catch a fish? I should have brought my clubs out here.”’

No one was more appreciative of the catch than Carrie Grant. Her son brought home dinner, and it didn’t cost her a dime.

“I was going to go out and at least buy him a pole, but he knows that the money is tight,” Carrie Grant said. “But I am contemplating going out to purchase him some golf clubs so he can bring back more food.”