I'm speechless. This is best left said for the man himself...
This fish means a lot to me. I caught it the other day at my own bachelor party (note the classy bachelor party issue wife-beater, which each of us were wearing at the time) while being rowed by good friend Adam Debruin. At first jolt I yelled “trout” and then started to doubt the troutiness, thinking I perhaps snagged a pike. I took the wood to it really hard, and brought it to the surface about 20 feet from the boat. We both saw it’s massive tail and then the whole of it’s body and a string of obscenities were yelled so as to be heard by the other boat in our group that was fishing the other side of the river from us. This fish brawled hard and I finally brought it boat-side and Adam netted it on the first try. We quickly pulled over and snapped a few pics, took a quick measurement (33” and we figure around 15+ lbs.) and released into cold water. No shit, this fish’s adipose fin was as big as my hand, and it’s other fins were like sheets of paper. It was barely hooked inside of the mouth. 3 seasoned trout guides and one fisheries biologist stood there completely impressed and fairly certain that we will never see a Montana brown trout like this again. When we reached the take out we were so belligerently drunk that we fell out of the boat, fell on and destroyed a cooler and Adam got a serious gash on his face from the gunwale. Photo Cred: Will Plumhoff.