Pulled from water?

[Tin-Can]

My first trip to Utah Lake in about 2003 with a coworker. We were in his 21' Lowe center console boat, out to the south west of the long arm that comes off of Bird Island. We had both already pulled up a small collection of fishing line balls, rusted hooks, lures, he had snagged and "boated" an old bait casting reel. We were having better luck bringing in "junk" than we were fish. From the slight swing of the boat at anchor, my line would alternate between tight, and slack. Then at a time when it should have been going slack it was doing a slow steady tighten. I got the pole, slow lifted it while tightening the drag, and as I would lift, it felt really heavy and the pole would bend almost double. There wasn't action that indicated a fish to me, and I didn't want to risk breaking my pole. So I was reaching out to cut the line, and Chuck says "hey, let me try". He grabs the pole, lifts and reels, and looks at me and says "it feels like a really big fish, if I get it in the boat can I keep it?" I told him, hey it's your boat, be my guest. So he works it for about 5 min. all the time I'm standing near him with the net. I see a big blob of something just under the water, but no fight. I reach the net down and scoop up whatever it is. WOW, heavy !.  Got it up over the side and it splats down on the deck, lots of mud stuck to what turned out to be a 1 lb. rock full of small holes. I had a good laugh at Chuck and he started to pick it up to toss it back. But I stopped him. I took that rock home, put it in a 5 gal. bucket with a gal. of bleach and let it sit out on the back patio in the sun about 2 weeks and soak till just about all the water had evaporated. Washed it off and then let it sit in sun for another 2 weeks. Then I took and glued a small wood dowel in one of the holes on top, and made a U.S. flag to put on the top of the dowel.  I made a sign "UTAH LAKE ROCK FISH" and put it on the dowel below the flag and gave it to Chuck.
That memento of a trip almost 17 years ago has stayed in my shop at Hill AFB ever since. Chuck left it when he retired, 2 or 3 other folks have had it on their work benches since then. Then last year it was left behind by the person that had it last and had  retired.  Now it is in my office, and I will be retiring the end of this month. I wonder if I should leave it for the shop to keep handing down, or take it with me.