Talk about great memories generated by this thread-- I have two more that came to me after I posted: one was exciting but short lived: I hooked a king off Washaway beach in about 12 feet of water. When I set the hook, it blasted out of there, jumping wave crest to wave crest until the reel jammed and blew, leaving Quantum parts all over the deck. When the reel froze, the fish straightened the hook. It wasn't an extraordinarily big salmon, maybe in the 30s, but what an sight!

The second was a big redfish in Yellow Cotton Bay by Venice. The guy on the front deck spotted this huge red tailing in the shallows and told me to throw a topwater. I pitched a Spook out, started to walk it back when it the bottom fell out of the bay. I set the hook, felt the fish and started reeling like crazy, thinking the fish was running toward the boat. About half way back, the fish is skidding on the surface. It turns out that an 18-inch gafftop catfish hit the topwater. The other fisherman said that red was about 6 feet long from nose to tail. I can still see that big gold tail with a black spot the size of a silver dollar.