1960 (or so) May Creek (trib of the Wallace) fishing with my Dad's fly rod and reel with a four(?) foot leader, colorado spinner and night crawler, held down with two split shot. Nasty buck about 7 or 8 pounds grabbed my shiat and ran downriver to the next hole. I couldn't put much pressure on the fish as I was only using 4 lb test. Old woman living on the creek comes out of her house (still remember her name...Mrs. Raddenbush) and yells to me, "Need some help?" I indicated, "Sure!", and off she trots out of sight behind her house and reemerges with a gaff hook on the end of a 10 or 12 foot pole, hikes up her dress, kicks off her shoes, and wades over next to me and says, "Just raise him up a bit". The buck was just sulking in the only deep spot, so I just gently pulled him up close to the surface, and Ol' Mrs. Raddenbush had that thing gaffed and drug up on the bar faster than I could blink. She just says, "There you go", and wades back across and out of sight.
Not a very glorious start, but my Dad sure was proud. Used to have some old 8mm movie footage of me holding that ugly thing up.