First, just a note. About 12 years ago, on my first trip down to the Kalama, a buddy who took me caught a steelhead and when we got home, he gave it to me. When I was cleaning it, I saw that its stomach was really distended. I cut it open and it had in it one of those little grey birds that you see dunking themselves into the water on the river edges. I've never really tried to match that hatch and I don't see those birds for sale in any of the bait shops I've been to.

Last year a buddy and I went up to Rivers Inlet Resort for kings in mid-August. After a couple fish, we thought we were getting the hang of things. We were motor mooching with 4 rods out and I'm on the motor at the stern when I get an absolute hammer strike on the rod off the stern, just on the other side of the motor from my seat. I jumped to reach it and just as I pulled it out of the rod holder, my feet go out from under me towards the bow and I end up on my knees and elbows on the bottom of the skiff. I've dropped the rod and in what looks like slow motion, it starts to head out of the boat, over the transom, the single action just screaming its ratchett off. As luck would have it, it caught up for just a second by the reel on the transome and I was just able to grab the rod butt and struggle up to my knees.

By this time my buddy had one rod in, but the fish completely ran around the other two and as I got a little line back, the other lines were just knots around my line. The fish must have taken 50 yards of line and as my friend tried frantically to surgically remove the knots without cutting my line, my line went slack. What a pair of Keystone Cops! I was shaking and just sick. I thought for a moment to just cut my line and be done with the whole mess, but I had too much line out and decided to try and get it back on the reel.

I worked for a full 5 minutes unraveling the knots that were jammed in my tip-top. When I finally got free, I began to reel in the slack. I reeled and reeled, when I felt tension, I assumed that I was just caught on the bottom. I was just pissed !! and I gave the long rod a huge jerk -- and then the rod gave a huge jerk back. The fish was still there and just took off on another scalding run.

We chased it around and finally boated it. A 47 lb. King. I can't believe the fish sat still for all of that with a hook in its jaw and a 5 oz. lead hang from it. It has reinforced a theory that I have that some fish are just meant to be caught, no matter what, and others are destined not to be caught, no matter what.