Sometimes ya' win- Sometimes Ya' loose

I spent the last two nights fishing with Alec who is home from Montana for a brief stay before returning to his summer job at The Trout Shop in Craig.  The first night we hit Starbuckville Dam.  The bite was pretty slow for me until I tie into a fair size Landlocked Salmon.  I was nymphing with a 5x tippet.  ( I guess you already know where this part of the story is going ).  A heavy fish of about 18"+ inches, he made 4 fantastic jumps while heading for the swiftest current of mid river.  I was into my backing faster than I have ever been before.  I turned up the drag one notch and against better judgement; put my hand ever so gently against the spool to temper the drag a bit more.  He made his last jump and everything went slack.

Night two was redemption.  Alec and I headed for one of our usual spots.  The water was up and the caddis hatch was thick.  We spent the first part of the evening with Alec scoring all the hook ups.  I decided to put the new Orvis Access to work and pumped out a 50' cast to mid-river, made a heavy mend to pop the fly off the water for a split second to give it a bit of animation.  Just as it bounced back to the waters surface, I saw the telltale flash and I was on. A good size brown with lots of fight in him.  He bulled the drag hard and tailed up trying to rub the hook on boulders and timber in the river bottom to no avail.

Sometimes Ya' win- Sometimes Ya' loose.  That's fishing.