This is still one of the catches of which I am most proud. As a 13-year-old, I had my dad drive me in the pouring rain to a trailhead in the South Mountain State Park that was near some wild trout water on the day after Thanksgiving, 2000. The brookies were stacked up, and I was catching one after the other by jigging and drifting dry flies downstream over them. All while I was fishing, in the pool that held all the brookies there was a large, light-colored shape that I thought was a log. However, when fighting a brook trout, the hooked fish bumped the "log," and it bent, moved out of the way, and then resumed its position. I couldn't get this fish to even look at my flies or jigs, and so I switched to a Panter Martin size 00 silver dressed spinner, tossed it onto the opposite bank, flipped it in the water, and retrieved it a few feet past the head of the giant fish. It shot out from the position it had been serenely holding, engulfed my lure, and I had it on shore before it realized it was hooked. I filled my drink cooler with water (I was fishing catch-and-release), dropped the massive rainbow into it, and hurried back up the trail. My dad drove me to the nearby ranger station, where they measured the Rainbow at 26", 7.1lbs, and took my picture. I then rushed the fish back to the pool where I caught it, and released it safely, where it swam back out and resumed its original holding position where it was when I caught it. In 17 years of fishing since, much of it for trout on 3 continents, I have yet to catch a salmonid this big, but hope to do so out west one of these summers!