My avatar is a Skagit buck from CnR season 2009. It was taped and supposedly 18#. It fought like hell and took line like hell which a big mean fish can do on a river as wide as the Skagit. It sounds stupid if you don’t fly fish but it was a hell of a cast and the line layed out perfect to get the fly to drop a little bit behind a boulder way the hell out there and get in that fish’s face. I remember thinking “that was a perfect cast to get the right drift!” right before he latched on, which never happens to me, usually I get fish on random cast. The fish is also memorable because I was using one of my older Hardy reels and they really are a blast with a fish like that. The fish is also memorable because I don’t really fly fish anymore, I found the average fly fisherman to be insufferable and decided to move on from the scene. I was never an exclusive fly fishing only type and grew up gear fishing a lot and it is that exclusive fly only culture that really grinds my gears. In the end fly fishing is fun, but too limited in a world of diminishing everything.