Lost a good fly to a salmon

I had an interesting fishing night last night. I was fly fishing salmon in Vetsijoki river. I didn't catch any due to combination of bad luck, bad equipment and maybe a pinch of incompetence :)

First couple of salmons that I had contact with last night didn't stick in the fly for more than a few seconds. The same problem with both of those, the line was almost directly towards down stream when they caught and I didn't have a loose loop in my hand that I could have released when I felt the fish there. This usually leads to fish not sticking tightly to the hook.

Couple of hours later a third salmon bit the fly...again the same fly, red butt. It was a bit like this: http://www.sorro.com/red_butt_sorro.php3. but it was bigger and had some flashabou in it. This time the salmon was tightly hooked. It gave a good fight for it's size (seemed like a bit over 3 kg) as it used the very strong stream in the rapid for it's benefit. At times I had to keep the salmon pretty tight as I had to stop it from getting into a very fierce rapid 15 meters downstream from where I was. Finally the fish got tired and I got it close to me but I didn't have a net or a striking hook with which to get it up and the water was too deep where I was to go to water and lift it up by hands. I started to look for a place to get the fish up and there was a nice place 10 meters downstream but I couldn't see any suitable size stones there for knocking out the fish as it was all one rock. So I looked around me and saw a perfect stone there. I leaned down and picked up the stone thinking next to walk the fish down to the place where I can get it up. But just when I got up the salmon took the last spring they always do and went to the strong stream in the middle of the rapid...and snap the tippet broke off.

The line I used for tippet was no good and the rod was in pretty bad angle when the fish made it's final spring, so the tippet couldn't take it. I must confess that I cursed pretty strongly when this happened. It is bad enough to loose a salmon when it's that close but I also lost a very very good fly. I still feel like crying just to think about it.

Oh well, that salmon was not mine and the life goes on. Today I have to go shopping for better tippet line and need to try to find a couple of good big salmon flies as I have now lost both of the bigger flies I had caught salmon with. I have plenty of good size 10 and 12 flies but now there's so much water it's better to use bigger flies than normally in these smaller rivers I like to fish in. Next winter I'll start practicing fly tying. I'll write about my experiences in learning that then.