Story by Mark Hume with Photography by Nick Didlick

When the fish hit it came at the end of a long day of waiting, a day of endless trolling in which people had talked themselves out, had slept, had eaten, had checked the line countless times, had watched the tide fall to a low ebb and had seen it start to rise again. When the strike came, there was a moment of shock. There were three lines running and now one, miraculously, was engaged.

The strike was so violent it drove the rod tip down and held it there, vibrating, tip almost dragging in the water.

“Fish on!” yelled the skipper from the cabin, as if those of us on the rear deck needed to be told. Maybe, stupefied by days of inaction, we did.The rod holder shuddered, and still we were frozen, as the powerful salmon began to pull line off the reel with gathering speed.

This was a chinook, there was no doubt about that.

When the rod was pried from its holder, threatening for a moment to shoot overboard, the fish felt the movement and dove into a deep trench. You could imagine it, moving down out of the green water where the sunlight reached, into the blackness below.

The skipper was back now, nervous as hell, afraid that this great fish, which might be the only one on a two-day charter, could somehow be lost. He fretted. He jumped nervously from foot to foot. He wound in the two outside lines. Then shouted.

“She’s coming up!”

And sure enough, you could see it. The line was no longer going straight down, but was angling out behind the boat, which was drifting dead in the water.The fish didn’t jump. It swirled just beneath the surface, stirring a turbulence that drifted like a small whirlpool for a moment before vanishing. The reel was screaming this time. Whatever the fish had seen or sensed as it came near the top had startled it. It seemed like it would never stop. But eventually it did. My wrist ached, my left bicep ached, and later I’d notice that the butt of the rod had raised a welt where it was jammed against my waist.

Slowly the fish came in. We waited for a glimpse, then saw it. “It’s huge!” someone said, and so it seemed, flashing that somber, silver side in the dark water far beneath the hull.

Then it was beside the boat. The net was out. Everyone on edge. “Get it on the first pass,” you pray out loud. And the skipper, calm now at the moment when others would panic, takes it in one smooth sweep.

And so the great chinook came in and was killed. It lay on the deck for a long time. And we stood around and just stared at it. It was so beautiful. It seemed a shame to kill it, but three guys, fishing for two days, and killing just one salmon - it didn’t seem too much to take.