1:00AM: Arrived at Jeremy’s apartment. Instead of going to bed, we were inspired to tie some flies. After about an hour, we came up with this bright orange pattern, which we named Kidang [Kidwell + Kang]. We were very confident that this fly would be our ticket to a trophy salmon.

2:00AM: We set two alarm clocks [one as a backup] at 4:00AM, and hit the floor hoping to get some sleep, but ended up tossing left and right for another hour thinking about the fish we were going to catch.

3:59AM: Both of us got up just minutes before the alarm went off. Jeremy prepared quick breakfast, while I was checking the gear once more.

4:30 AM: Off to the river. .

5:00 AM: We were the first ones on the river. It was still pitch dark. While we quickly got into our waders and set up the rods, a few cars started to pull into the river bank. We beat them to the river and positioned ourselves at the most promising spot on the river. Just after a few minutes, we started hearing loud splashes all around us. At first we thought they were otters, but soon realized they were King Salmon running through the river. Our hearts began to pound, and we started casting blindly in the pitch dark. We tried to wade into the water, but it was very scary not knowing how deep the water was. We fished together for about an hour and Jeremy decided to try the other side of the river. .

7:00AM: I moved to another spot and cast my line, drifting it along the current. Suddenly, it wouldn’t move. It felt like my line snagged the bottom. Then, swish, my line started flying off the reel. Within a few seconds, I lost about 150 yards of my line, and I knew I was onto a decent fish. I started screaming at Jeremy. “Fish on! Fish on!” Then, on the other side of the river, he started screaming at me "fish on!". Double hookup. We began to merge to the center of the river with fish on each of our rods. Then, for the first time, I saw the tail of my salmon emerge from the water. I almost fainted. It was a monster. Jeremy saw the fish, and decided to let go of his, so that we could team up to chase after this behemoth. For the next hour, this fish pulled us almost another 200 yards. I was very careful not to horse the fish, so both of us had to run after him. Most fishermen are great liars when it comes to the size of their catch, but Jeremy would agree that this one was at least 25lbs. pushing beyond 4ft. in length. At times, Jeremy was so close to grabbing him, but we wanted to be very careful not to spook the fish. We fought for almost 40 minutes before it slowly started giving in. When we managed to bring him to the shore within about 10 feet of our reach, we realized how close we were to landing the fish of a lifetime. Then, the most unthinkable thing happened. “Pop!” The line came loose. The 12lb test line pulling 25lb of weight against the current for almost 40 minutes had to give in at some point. The fish sat there for a few moments, then, said his final goodbye and swam away. There were two guys on a boat watching the whole thing, and one of them shouted at me, “That’s too bad!” Jeremy and I stared at each other speechless for the next few minutes. No words of consolation were appropriate at that moment. We just stared at each other.

By the time, we got back to our original spot, the sun had come up and almost an hour had passed since we hooked our first fish. We fished hard for the next 6 hours or so in hopes of landing another monster, but without much success. Such is the story of a fisherman. People always talk about the one that got away, but for me, it hurts to even think about it. Yet, when time passes, this day will go down as one of the most memorable fishing adventures in my story book. I am so glad that Jeremy was there with me the whole time. Although he managed to take a few pictures while I was fighting the fish, he apologized for not getting the shot of the fish. Then, he said to me, “at least this way, the fish will keep getting bigger and bigger in our memory… and in our nightmares of when he broke off ”. That’s so true. Now that I think about it, the fish was actually close to 40 lbs. and 5 feet in length. By the time I get to tell this story to my daughters, who knows how big it will be? :-)