Many of us fish a lifetime without hooking into a fish like the salmon Jessica Duffney has here. (Brock Curlew/Submitted by Gord Follett) She stands 5'5" and weighs all of 112 pounds. She has a serious heart issue and is constantly facing battles dealing with debilitating health conditions that affect her cardiovascular and neurological systems.
She has to carry a nitroglycerin spray at all times. She's spent — and continues to spend — more time with doctors in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Quebec and Alberta than she cares to remember. She's still seeing medical specialists in hopes of properly diagnosing and treating other health issues.
And she catches Atlantic salmon weighing in excess of 30 pounds. Jessica Duffney of Corner Brook exemplifies a fighting spirit like few I have ever met, a drive that has earned her quite a reputation for catching monster fish on the Lower Humber River that the vast majority of anglers in Newfoundland and Labrador can only dream of during their 30-, 40- or 50-plus-year fishing careers. Raised by her grandparents in the tiny community of Benoit's Cove in the Bay of Islands, the 36-year-old was searching for "a passion" several years back that would provide her with the hope, happiness and meaning to her life that she says was being sucked out of her.
Once a competitive teen involved in various sports who even worked as a deckhand aboard a commercial fishing boat in her early 20s, Jessica was diagnosed with supraventricular tachycard.