Best fish by a Red Tagger on fly (est.5+kgs) — longest tussle to hand (approx. 90mins) — biggest grin (probably still there) — over 30” or 75cms in length.

Having had a previous, quite successful, trip with me in April, Matthew and his dad Garry were so keen to go again so they bribed me out of the one-day birthday break I had planned with a rather nice red (went down very well with a roast the other night thanks guys).

Matthew had heard of the escapee salmon down south and was keen to have a go at them.

After whetting their appetite on a few wild browns on the dry pre-lunch we headed for a piece of water I thought might hold a salmon or two. Changed to a wet fly (whitebait imitation), increased rod weight to a #6 and thought it prudent to up the tippet to 2.7kg from the 5X we had been running.

Pointed Matthew (in what I thought) was the right direction and started off to help out Garry.

Had not gone a dozen paces when there is this great commotion behind me a cry of ‘Roger help! what do I now?’

Turning to see a massive fish a metre out of the water, Matt with eyes on stalks, screaming reel and a petrified grin, my first, non-uttered thought was panic!), however some sanity prevailed and ‘keep rod tip up, slightly increase drag pressure and stay calm’ actually came forth.

Then as the colour of the reel’s arbor was rapidly being exposed by disappearing backing that was followed by ‘turn after it, take off downstream to make up line, try to lead it into some gentler water’

For the next hour or more, we saw most of the 50+ meters backing for longer than I thought safe, covered something like 150 metres downstream trying to gain some sort of control with the reel literally ‘running hot’ and Matt’s right arm turning to jelly.

Finally after nearly 90 minutes we got this magnificent female salmon in the net. And, as you can see in the photo above, they released her safely.