Great night on the snake for me. It was nice when I got out, but soon turned to heavy rain in the evening which most people packed up and went home. There was about 3-5 boats which stayed for the evening fishing on the confluence. I got a small A-run wild and felt nice to get one in. It was nor a big deal letting it go as it would not have alot of meat anyways. Then the moon came out of the clouds and the rain stopped. It looked almost like a harvest moon, and it looked perfect for fish to ambush prey in the moonlight. Literally 2 minutes after the moon came out I got slammed. The drag started peeling out for about 60 seconds. I knew I had something really big and orginally thought nice chinook. I played it in softly, when it was about 100 feet from the boat it took to the air and I was right it was huge. I knew it was a big steelhead when it jumped about 5 feet out of the water twice in a row basking in the moonlight. I finally got it to my net(which is a steelhead net-always worked for me before and on the westside) and over a foot of its tail is sticking out with its head at the bottom. It floped with tail weight and jumped right out of the net! I went for the second net try and got it. It was over 36 inch B run buck steelhead, and wild. My heart sunk that I would not get to keep him, but he was let go right away. No pictures due to darkness and I could not get the camera working quick enough I tried with camera phone but it came out terrible. Its better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all. Hopefully his genes get passed on, we need more steelhead like him.

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