Which do you remember longer?

[spinner1]

This experience?
Landing a HUGE trout
http://flyanglersonline.com/features...cast/rc492.php

Or this morning

First cast of the day 6:40am
0X new leader
The trout hits the size 6 coneheaded turkey leech almost immediately.

ALL I see is its TAIL
***OMG***
Bigger than my hand and I have a HUGE hand.
It takes off running immediately. Joe puts a little pressure on it trying to turn it.

The line comes back limp. The escapee bit through the new 0x leader.

Joe put on that brand new 0X leader in front of me. Was not angler error or tactical error.

The trout won on this day.

Joe's walked back to the car and was muttering and with absolute disbelief.

Joe got a glimpse of the whole fish. He said it was bigger than one the in the above story.

I say the "One That Got Away" will be remembered longer.

Joe just called me and we are planning our next visit to 0X.

[Steve Molcsan]

To be honest, if you wrote it or had anything to do with it
I remember very well..

Good stuff!

Steve

[Beaver]

I agree. " The one that got away" would definitely be remembered longer. Better to have battled and lost than to not have battled at all. Great story. Thanks.

Beaver

[Lotech]

Both would be prominent in my memory. However, for now, my best memory is landing one fish after another on the St. Joe in North Idaho. I only fished for 45 minutes, but I must have landed a dozen fish. (The older the memory, the better the story gets.)

[bdharris]

Both would be prominent in my memory. However, for now, my best memory is landing one fish after another on the St. Joe in North Idaho. I only fished for 45 minutes, but I must have landed a dozen fish. (The older the memory, the better the story gets.)

St. Joe experiences dominate my fishing memories. Magic place. And a 10" fish was large when I fished there in the 60s. Thank everyone for the improvements that catch-and-release provide to a fishery.

[JohnScott]

Lots of fish that I've landed on a variety of waters provide great memories.

One from last year was very special. A cutthroat on a small mountain creek that refused the fly time after time while rising to naturals consistently for well over half an hour. A few days later, I went back to that spot and sat on the bank for over two hours waiting for the hatch to begin. When it did, the cutt appeared in exactly the same place, the same rise, the same take of a natural Western Green Drake. One well timed properly placed cast and I had him. 17" of beautiful cutthroat trout.

BUT that memory will likely fade and mingle with memories of the thousands of other fish that I've caught the past several years.

One memory will not fade - the one that got away.

I was on the Henry's Fork downstream of St. Anthony a year ago last September. I was fishing a Pine Squirrel Cheater off a class II full sinking line with a 5 wt rod, casting down and across and stripping it with short steady strips as it came across the current. Lots of nice brown trout ranging from 15" to 20" in hand that day.

In one particularly fishy looking spot, a hole just above the point where a side channel broke off from the main channel, the fly hit the water about thirty feet out from my position. Two strips and a boil where the fly should be. Just after he hit the fly, a huge brown rolled on the surface. Couldn't see him clearly from nose to tail, but from back to belly he was by far the biggest fish I've had on.

When he felt the hook, he ran once and paused. Then ran again. When he stopped the second time, I looked down at my reel. Two or three wraps of fly line over the backing.

Just downstream, there was a fast deep riffle. I knew that I could not follow him downstream - I'd tried wading some of that water a few days earlier and knew it would not be manageable for me. I knew that if I let this fish run any further downstream, it would take me a long time to land him, and being dragged a couple hundred feet or more upstream against that current back to my position would likely kill him.

I decided to hold him and hope for the best. A couple seconds later, the 2X 10# tippet broke cleanly. It was fresh tippet. Maybe he nicked it with a tooth. Or maybe the weight of the fish, which I estimated to be in the high 20" range, in that heavy current was enough to simply break it off.

John

[Valhalla 1]

Personally, I'll settle for either memory...

I'm really enjoying the quality of the stories you guys pass on. I can almost feel the action and the excitement like it was my own. Thanks for telling the stories.

[J Castwell]

I see the nice things about C&R,,, you probably will not like my column this week. Sorry.

[maodiver]

I see the nice things about C&R,,, you probably will not like my column this week. Sorry.

I actually loved your message. I love to eat fish and have no problems killing and eating them. I do NOT kill them all, but I will eat some from every legal stream.

I have to say, I also have no problems with the looks I get from other FFers when I kill a legal fish. There is a famous stream in Norther California which gets heavy pressure, and has a limit of 2 fish over 18". I usually kill one when I fish there, and have felt at times that I would be thrashed by the fly rods of those next to me. THAT IS WHY THERE IS A LIMIT THERE, PEOPLE!!

What I enjoy about fishing there the most is when those fishers are using their foam/yarn/etc strike indicators, and I float my little red and white bobber down the same stream. A bobber is a bobber, and I like the way they float, and cast. I also find the red/white keeps my roots out there where I can see them.

So Right on, Castwell. Fish is good for you, has plenty of Omega oil, and tastes really fine.

[spinner1]

When Joe called this morning I told him that he saved money not landing that fish.
I would have taken scads of photos and would have had to make a fiberglass repro
made. So the big fish saved him 400 bucks by not being landed.

Len