A young fisherman had his wish come true recently when he “ran into” his fishing idol during a family vacation in northern Minnesota.

Ten-year-old Colby, the avid angler, was on Mantrap Lake when his parents took him to a nearby dock. They’d “heard” that a boat moored there belonged to Scott Martin, Colby’s fishing hero.

The parents had reached out to Make-A-Wish Minnesota after Colby was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease in 2017. Through connections between 3M, Make-A-Wish and Scott, the well-planned ruse was pulled off while Martin was in the area for a fishing tournament.

As the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote:

A short while later, when Colby stepped onto a Mantrap Lake dock prepared for a morning of fishing, he recognized the decal-splashed Ranger he saw tied there.

It was Scott Martin’s boat!

“I was standing out of sight, around a corner, and when Colby saw my boat, I walked up behind him and said, ‘Hey, man, what’s going on?’ ” Martin said. “Then I said, ‘Why don’t you just jump in this boat of mine and we’ll do a little fishing together?’ ”

Star-struck, Colby, who will have quite a story to tell his fellow fourth-graders when he returns to school next week, said, “When I saw Scott, it was more like a dream than something real.”

Find out how their fishing trip went by reading the rest of the story in the Star Tribune.