Got an interesting email from JerkBait last weekend, to wit-
“When you fish everyday it’s inevitable that from time to time you’ll have one of those holy crap I can’t believe that just happened moments. Yesterday I had one of those moments. The Silvers have just started to come in on our main river system, and we were hammering them about 20 yards from the salt.”
“I tied on the [REDACTED] you sent up with [REDACTED], and on my first cast it was game on, and this fish wanted to party a little harder than the others. He slow played me for a brief second, and then I blinked and was deep into my backing that hasn’t seen the light of day since August of 2010. The oh shit factor started to come into my mind when I realized I didn’t have much backing left either. My drag was cranked down about as much as I could, and my left thumb bruises are evidence I was trying to stop the fish.”
“I finally started to gain some ground, and had my fly line inches from the reel when my heart stopped, and the Albright knot slipped. With another fly rod I cast out and snagged the fly line that was zipping all over the river, fed it back through my guides, reattached it to my backing, and landed the fish, and got the [REDACTED] back. With that, I called it an evening, and headed back to the lodge…Thanks for the fly, man.”
Now, a story like this would be good by itself, but this one comes with pics, too. Faces have been blocked to protect the protagonist in this little classic, but the fly…the fly is left unblocked to taunt you.
Halfway into the action, after snagging the flyline.
At this point, a couple of square knots would probably be faster.
Game, once off, now back on.
The reward…not the fish, the fly.
Would have been a shame to lose it.
