We were floating a river in Alaska. It was late in the trip, and silvers had been hard to catch. We had camped on a wide gravel bar, at a spot where the river had a nice little eddy on the far side. Easily reachable with a spoon, kinda tough to reach with a fly.

I was wearing a ball cap, not the filson brimmed hat I normally wear when throwing big flies. I was fishing a size two flash fly. Now, for uninitiated, a flash fly is made on this big nasty mustad fly hook, which has a shank about an inch and a half long, and it's made of extra heavy wire. Then you wrap it with heavy lead wire so that it will sink. Alas, this was before I decided to debarb all my flies at home as I tie them. Which I do now, always, for reasons we shall yet discuss.

The morning came, and I got up first, and started making the fire. As I was bent over the fire, a wave of silvers started rolling their way up the far side of the hole. I immediately abandoned the fire, and grabbed my eight wgt. I didn't have waders on, so I was stuck at the waters edge. I started roll casting out and frantically stripped line to get ready for the across river cast. I flipped the heavy sink tip out into the current, Ipicked it up and let it fly. Twenty feet too short, and a silver rolled just beyond my fly. With slightly trembling fingers, I stripped out the line to the backing, flipped the line out ahead of me, threw one cast back, one forward, a long shooting back cast, grip the line, haul forward, and hit myself dead in the back of the head with the sink tip. An eight wgt sink tip weighs about 220 grains, and is traveling at about 300 feet per second.

After smacking me in the back of the head, the line continued forward, but the fly was on the wrong side of my head. It raked across my ear, piercing it just where all the barristas are doing it these days. The line continued merrily forward, snapping the 15 lb maxima leader taut, and snapping it. The act of snapping it buried the barb deeply into my upper ear.

OK, this was fun. We're three days drift from anything faintly resembling civilisation (and the best we could do was a faint resemblance). I've got a new, well ahead of the times adornment that hurts like hell. And the fish are moving upstream.

There was only one thing to do. Fortunately, we had not exhausted our supply of whiskey. We put a little on my ear, a little in me, and pulled it out.

For the rest of the trip, everyone gave me grief for breaking off the big one on the strike.