Oh yeah, gotta weigh in on this one

About '94 or so in late March I was flyfishing the upper Quinault, in the spot that I referred to as the "toilet bowl hole" - water kept going round and round in a big eddy. I kind of casually threw my fly in there and watched it sink out of sight, then watched first the line and then the fly wash back around near my feet at the edge of this 10 foot deep hole. The water was gin clear, and as I was stripping in line for the next cast I noticed a huge dark boulder detach itself from the bottom, open up a big white mouth, and eat my fly. I set the hook and this monster buck in full spawning regalia flew 5 feet out of the water and looked me in the eye a rod-length away, hit the water running, and proceeded to peel off downstream. I threw all the loops I had in my left hand in the river and hung on - the fish hit the shallows at the tailout and jumped five feet in the air again, and when it came down enough line had washed downstream that it felt tension in that direction - as I had hoped - and bolted upstream, right out of the hole and into a series of 4 foot standing waves out in the mainstem. Once again it hit the end of the line, and then came out of the water in a series of 7 leaps (yes, I counted each one), each time literally bouncing on top of one of those waves and launching itself into the air, with my leader and then my line throwing a half-hitch around it each time. Then it hit the water again at the end of the tailout and lay there stunned - it had gone so berserk for 30 seconds that it had temporarily exhausted itself. Well, by this time my fly line was well wrapped around and attached to it's tail, even though the hook was still in it's mouth. I tried to pull it in backwards against the current and get my hand around it's tail - which turned out to be so large that my hand wouldn't fit around it, and when I touched him he started to come back to life. He wouldn't beach backwards, and once he started to swim away I knew I would be toast if he hit the main current - with my line wrapped around him there was no way I could break him off and would likely lose the whole line. So I ran downstream and worked him into a side channel, jumped in front of him when he tried to run back out of it, and got him to panic and run himself up on a gravel bar trying to get to the mainstem. I was able to pounce on him, get him unwrapped and unhooked, and get him measured - 39 inches long and 21 inches around - a good 22 pounds and shaped like a summer run - long, lean, and mean! I let him go to produce more like him, and then just sat there and breathed hard for the next half hour.