This fall I had a pretty good fight on the Hanford Reach. I was backtrolling a herring/jet diver at B/C Reactor when my rod doubled over and started peeling line fast. I joked that the fish was trying to spool me as I started fighting it. I had several hundred yards of 50lb braid on top of a few dozen yards of mono backing, and have pulled literally hundreds of chinook from this hole, so I wasn't worried... at first. I threw the kicker in neutral as the fish kept running. I threw it in reverse as the braid ran out. I gave it full throttle reverse as the mono backing dwindled. I watched the revolutions slow almost to a stop as it got down to the arbor knot... and reached the rod out pointing at the fish to get the last few inches possible as the boat was nearly catching up to the fish's epic run. But at the last possible instant... pop! I felt the line snap at the spool. Dejected, I looked down at my now-empty reel as the boat flew backward down the river. Huh? A slight tug, tug on my rod. I looked again at the reel and turned the handle. Still empty. Another tug, tug. I looked up to see that the curlicue of the broken knot has snagged in the third-to-last eyelet on my rod, and with the line nearly slack as I'm backing downriver, it's holding. I quickly handed the rod to my buddy and handlined in about 20 feet, and told him to rethread it through the line guides. When he was done I handed the line to my other buddy who kept handlining in some slack while I retied the arbor knot. When I reeled in about 20 yards of slack line, I still had the fish on-- although it was all the way on the other side of the river and downstream. By this time the fish was about played out, and I just had to reel in all the line-- good thing, because the level-wind pawl picked this time to malfunction also. I landed what turned out to be only a 32-pound hen, but she was a chromer and it was the hottest run I've ever seen. She must have had some assistance from the current at the tailout of the hole.