After being buried in a new job and then taking a month long vacation I am starting to get back into the groove. One thing I needed was to punch my 1st steelhead on my new card.
Got to the river about 6:30, saw fish being caught pretty consistently throughout the morning. Hit a beautiful hatchery hen about 9:30, full of fight, took awhile to get her in. I tailed her, brought her in one hand and my rod in the other back to the bank, laid my rod down and the fish next to it to get the jig out. As soon as I removed the jig she flexed, launched herself a good 16" vertical and landed right on my rod. Got her strung up and punched, retied my leader, when back out and 1st cast POW! the rod exploded before I even got it to my ear, scared the hell out of me. My guess is that it got damaged by whatever rock was under the fish when she hit it. Luckily I also had my spoon rod so I threw spoons for awhile before calling it a day (I knew traffic heading west would be bad - and it was).

Hen weighed out at 8# cleaned and believe it or not still had sea lice!

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