I was wade fishing in the lower canyon of the Yakima a couple days ago and hooked what I thought was a very large trout or possibly a whitefish. From the way it pulled I thought it might be 18" or 20". When it surfaced it came up tail first. I was using a nymph with a #18 dropper. As it turned out several minutes later, when I finally worked the fish in close enough to remove the hook, the tiny PT dropper had snagged the fatty adipose fin. The chunky bow turned out to be a respectable 14" or 15", but not the lunker I'd at first thought. As I clumsily released the fish, it returned the favor. The PT dropper snapped up and became embedded in the crease of my thumb. All these years, I've never used a trout net. Usually, I have no trouble flicking the hook loose, but there are those other times when I'm standing in knee-deep water, trying to take a very tiny hook out of a large, flopping trout when I really wish that I had a landing net. Is a net an indispensable item for most o! f you, or just another fishing gadget that weighs you down and gets tangled in the streamside brush?
Bob Martin
