Gone fishing: William Rambo

Boy stands on a boat, holding a fish.

Photo 1: Will Rambo poses with a 10.4 pound common carp he caught. (Photo Courtesy of Will Rambo)

This is one of 16 profiles in our 2019 “Musang Insider” series. Click here to read the rest of the series.

If you’ve ever met freshman William Rambo, the conversation has probably turned to one thing: fishing. He’s known for his love of the sport, and frequent mentions of his many experiences with catching multiple types of fish. You might have seen him browsing Fishbrain, a fish based social media platform, checking out other people’s catches and posting his own.

As I sat down with him at the library, he quickly became animated in talking about his favorite hobby and pastime.

“I’ve been fishing since I was two years old when I first started with some family I have down in Georgia. The first time I ever fished was just with a bamboo stick with a string and some bait on the end, it’s really simple but it works.”

Ever since that first experience, he’s never stopped going out to the water as often as he can to try and catch as much as he can. “Part of the reason I love it is that it’s just you and that you have to take so much into account, and it’s just an amazing feeling once it all comes together.

His family also owns a farm of around 53 acres in Virginia with multiple ponds that he visits every weekend. He’s had encounters with various wild animals on the property, including black widow spiders and an eight-foot-long black rat snake that he names Kaa.

He recounted the story about how he was on a crowded river in Wisconsin, with a small rod meant for kids. He had never fished for salmon before until then, but he managed to hook an almost 40-pound salmon as it was swimming upstream.

“Another person was trying to help me net it, and he dropped the net, the net hit my line and snapped the line after I fought it for about an hour.”

He did, however, manage to catch another salmon later in the day, but it wasn’t as big. If you’ve never been fishing before, he has some advice:

“The thing about fishing is that some people see it as boring because they went once, weren’t successful and then just didn’t go again. If you haven’t been before, I would definitely say you should go with someone more experienced who had done it before.”