Phil’s Catch of the Day
By Watermelon the Gecko
	It was a fine winter day in the Alaskan frontier. The snow had covered the landscape, blanketing the area in a fluffy layer of white. The silence of the land was calming, with the only noise being the wind blowing through the trees and across the frozen lake nearby. The lake was perfectly frozen over, thick enough for a person to stand on it without falling in.
	“The perfect weather for some ice fishing,” said a lone figure to himself in the center of the lake.
	That figure was Phil, a young man bundled up in blue snowpants, an orange jacket with a fishing vest, snowshoes, and thick blue gloves. He was sitting on a bucket with a fishing pole in his hands. A small hole had been carved into the ice, which the line from the pole was lazily drifting beneath. Phil had been sitting there for nearly two straight hours, and he had little to show for it.
	“Any second now... This’ll be the biggest salmon I’ve ever caught. I just know it.”
	He sat there, focusing intently on the hole in the ice, his calm, focused breaths drifting through the frigid winter air as soon as they left him.
	Suddenly, Phil felt a very rough tug pull the line down.
	He stood up and grinned, pulling at the line and reeling it in. The thing underneath the ice fought roughly, constantly pulling away from Phil. Whatever was under the ice, it was giving Phil quite the workout. It didn’t matter what Phil did, the creature seemed to just pull away.
	Suddenly, the tugging stopped, with Phil falling back and landing on his back.
	“Ow! Urgh... You better have been worth the effort, you little-”
	Phil noticed the line was quite a bit shorter than it was when he initially cast it into the ice.
	The line had snapped. The fish had gotten away.
	“URGH!!! That was going to be my catch of the day, and it just gets away from me that easily?!”
	Phil’s ballistic rage-induced yelling echoed across the landscape as he continued on the rant for a long, long while. Once he finally calmed down, he grabbed a replacement hook, sent out a bit more of a line, and placed it back into the hole in the ice.
	Phil’s rage had mostly faded... But his rage was the perfect trigger for what was about to happen.
	Phil didn’t notice what was occurring at first. His skin was changing texture and color. Beneath his clothing, his skin was turning a deep shade of brown with white on the belly. Everywhere the new coloration touched became scaled, rather than the smooth skin of a human.
	The changing human didn’t notice the changes until he felt an odd pressure on the top of his head. It felt as if the top of his head was growing something smack in the center of it and was pushing against his hood. He took one hand off of his fishing rod and reached up to his head, feeling the bump... and then went wide-eyed once he realized the bump was growing. Fast.
	“Hunh...?”
	Phil didn’t have any time to process the growth on his head as his body seemed to be growing. His changing skin advanced up to his face as his shoes began to feel too small for him. He looked down and saw that they were beginning to rip apart as his feet grew rapidly. Soon, they ripped free, revealing that his toes had fused together, creating only three toes on each foot. Each foot was red scaled with white scales on the soles, and each of his new toes had a black, sharp claw on the tip.
	“What the he-”
	He was cut off as his feet suddenly changed rapidly, causing him to wince as he felt his legs becoming more digitigrade. A small layer of skin filled the space in-between his toes, giving his feet webbing.
	Suddenly, the seat of his pants tore open, revealing a red fish tail rapidly growing out from his behind. The tip of his newly obtained tail had a brown fin on the end that matched the brown on his face. His legs were getting progressively thicker with the growing muscle mass, shredding his snowpants and revealing red and white scales.
	His hands were also growing rapidly, obliterating his gloves. His hands had suffered the same fate as his feet, with his ring and pinky fingers having fused together, leaving him with four fingers on each hand. His hands had the same red scales that were covering his arms, new tail, and legs, while his palms had the whites of the bottom of his feet and tail. A new layer of flesh stretched across the gaps between his fingers, giving his hands the same webbing his feet had gained just moments before.
	He stood up, breathing heavily and trying to keep his balance on his new feet as his arms bulked up, ripping his warm winter jacket apart and revealing more red scales. The changes spread up his shoulders and the final sections of his transformation began.
	The bump on his head from earlier had finally ripped through Phil’s hood, revealing a massive red fin. The brown scales on his face passed his eyes, turning them a bright shade of yellow and changing the whites of his eyes into pitch black sclera that were as dark as the night. His hair began to part as the scales traveled up his scalp.
	A bit more pressure in his back, and a new dorsal fin was being grown on Phil. The giant red fin grew out and ripped Phil’s jacket in the back. He now had three fins. One on his head, one on his back, and one on his tail, not including the tailfin.
	His face began to change, with his nose pushing out into a sharp snout that pushed his new eyes to the side slightly, giving him a wider range of vision. He looked into the hole in the ice at the reflection that the water cast.
	“I’m... a salmon...?”
	Phil’s changes suddenly picked up again, for one last major change.
	He could feel his lungs changing, making it slightly difficult to breathe. He panted heavily and collapsed to his knees. Three large slits opened up on either side of Phil’s neck, which he was able to see in the reflection in the water.
	“G-gills...?!”
	Phil’s breathing finally returned to normal as his changes finally came to a halt.
	He looked over himself. He was an anthropomorphic salmon, from head to toe. He flexed his newly webbed fingers and toes, getting a feel for them. He looked over his body and sighed at the destroyed clothing that surrounded him.
	“Urgh... That cost me so much, too...”
	Phil’s annoyance was short-lived as he noticed a salmon poking its head out of the hole in the ice, looking up at him.
	In its mouth was Phil’s fish hook.
	Before the fish could dart back under the water, Phil darted his arm fully into the frigid lake, his new aquatic form preventing him from feeling too cold, and wrapping his webbed hand around the salmon, encasing it in the cage that was his hand.
	He took it out of the water, smirked as it wriggled about in his hand, and placed it in the bucket once he overturned it. He packed up his things before giving himself one more good look over.
	He smirked again and looked at his webbed hands.
	“I guess I’m the catch of the day.”