Vicky and I were steelhead fishing on a secret riffle of a nameless Pacific Northwest river, perhaps the best iron-head water between the Russian and Bella Coola, to which you may receive directions for a thousand dollars cash. It was late afternoon, the sky the color of wet ashes, the river high but beginning to clear. I was drifting a roe-glo through the upper stretch of the run when I felt a slight pause in the tick-tick-tickity rhythm of the pencil-lead sinker bouncing along the stony bottom. I set the hook. The rod tip bowed and began to pulse, the heavy, solid throb running through my shoulders.

“Fish on!” I hollered to Vicky forty yards downstream.

She turned and looked at me, yelling back, “Really?”

For some reason, this is the usual response of my fishing companions, leading me to believe they regard me as either an astonishingly inept fisherman or an insanely reckless liar.

“Really!” I assured her at the top of my lungs, lifting my doubled rod as proof before turning my attention to the battle.

Actually, it wasn’t much of a battle. The fish was sulking in the strong mid-channel current. I tightened the star drag slightly and applied some pressure; the fish turned lethargically and headed downstream. I lightly thumbed the spool; at the added resistance, the fish swung toward shore down by Vicky, who had just reeled in and started walking my way, no doubt to offer encouragement, counsel, and general assistance.

As my line sliced toward her, she stopped and peered into the water, then shook her head. “Hey,” she called, “you’ve got a big ol’ sore-tail salmon.”

“No,” I begged her.

She pointed emphatically a few feet offshore. “I can see it. Big, beat-up sore-tail.”

I took the Lord’s name in serious vain–no wonder the fish wasn’t fighting–then tightened the drag to reel in the fish for quick release. The fish offered little resistance until it was about twenty feet away, then made a sullen move toward swifter water. When I clamped down, it swung back, passing in front of me. Sure enough, it was a spent salmon, its rotting fins worn to nubs, the battered body mottled with patches of dull white fungus.

But something wasn’t right. The sore-tail was languidly corkscrewing along the bottom, a movement that didn’t match the steady quiver I felt through the rod. Then I saw why: The sore-tail, in blind expression of the spawntill-you-die imperative, was engaged in a last-gasp courtship of the fish actually connected to my line, a steelhead longer than a yardstick and as deep as a Dutch oven.

Hearing Vicky move up behind me, I whispered, “That sore-tail you saw isn’t the fish I have on. It’s trailing my fish, which is one humongous hog of a steelie, putting on some spawning moves.”

“Sure it is,” Vicky said.