You never forget the first one.

I was fishing a deep hole in the upper Kalama after fly fishing trout up on Gobar Cr. one summer eons ago. I flipped a 1/4 oz brown Rooster Tail to the far side where I saw trout (must have been smolts) rising. Perched high on a large rock I watched my spinner in the clear water as it swung across the deep pool. As it passed over a huge underwater rock, an immense buck summer steelhead in full rainbow regalia snaked out from behind it and followed the lure right up to my rock. When I dropped the lure it chomped down on it hard and it was game on. The fish was all over that pool and I could watch every move he made. He was magnificent. But just when I was thinking I might have a chance to land him he slid over towards my rock and hung suspended in the water looking directly up at me. We sat there like that for a while until he finally looked up and simply opened his mouth and my spinner came straight back at me. He then calmly cruised back to his lair. My knees were shaking so bad I couldn't get off that rock. When I looked down at the spinner he had completely mashed the light wire treble hook flat. All I could do was laugh knowing that he was never hooked and that he had just played me in a game of "tug of war". From then on I was hooked. Think it was the last time I fished Gobar for trout come to think of it