Saturday evening the weather was clear and crisp, October-perfect. I got underway from home an hour before sunset, so the late-afternoon sun on the autumn leaves provided one continuous Kodak moment until the sun slipped below the western horizon. As I crossed the Androscoggin at Rumford Corner the moon, still nearly full, was rising over the eastern hills. By the time I turned left in Mexico and headed up Route 17 for Oquossoc, darkness had set in. The moose on the road were damn near invisible. First, two very large cows, ears pinned back, tetchy at my intrusion, took their time getting off the road. Not two miles later I had to hit the brakes again for a towering bull. I saw the antlers first, almost orange in the glare of the headlights, then the outline of the massive, glossy black body, high atop those impossibly long legs.

At camp I had to fire up the woodstove. The Bro had thoughtfully split a boxful of firewood before he left last week, so in nothing flat I had a hot blaze and the camp warmed up quickly. On the battery-powered radio I got from my kids for Christmas, I learned the Yankees had been eliminated by the Tigers. Now I knew it would be a good weekend.

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. Once the sun was up, the air quickly warmed from the 32 degrees of 6 a.m. and by midmorning I had to remove my fleece jacket. I took the tin boat which another camp owner graciously lets me use and anchored in the current off the north shore of the Pool. I tied on a Straw Man, tied by master fly tyer Doug Mawhinney of Mexico, cast it across the current, let it drift, then swing, then hang. About three seconds into the hang, a fish nailed it. Big fish. Felt big. Then it jumped, and I could see it wasn't just a big fish but an ohmygod fish. What follows could be a long story. I'll simply say the battle went on for about 45 minutes and drew a crowd. Other guys quit fishing to sit on the bank and watch. But what we had was a standoff. The fish had his weight working for him, but also the current. All I had was a 4-weight rod, a 4X tippet, and an anchored boat, to which I could simply not bring that fish. Could not do it. I was overmatched by the size of the fish and the strength of the current. Finally, the big fish gave a shake of his head and the hook came out of wherever it had been, and just like that it was over. The air went out of me and out of the assembled audience on shore. They went off to their own angling, and I resumed mine, but every fish I landed after that seemed like a mere chub, a smelt, compared to The One That Got Away.

Cut to the next day, same time, roughly the same place. Doug Mawhinney himself, the fly tyer, came down to the pool and we yelled at each other over the roar of the water, me from the boat and he from the shore as he rigged up and waded into the tail of the Pool.

"Boy, do I have a story for you!" I shouted.

"Did he take a Straw Man?" Doug yelled back.

I nodded.

It wasn't five minutes later I tied into another big salmon. He felt like the twin brother of the one I had on the day before.

"Oh, no," I thought. "Here we go again."

And indeed, here we went again. The big fish hunkered down and held, about 10 feet down, and I could not move him. Occasionally he lit out for the territory downcurrent and peeled line off my reel, but I was able to bring him back on station. But not a foot farther. Another standoff. Again, spectators began to gather on the bank. I could not have a repeat of the day before -- but what to do?

Finally, I concluded that I would have to somehow pull up the anchor and get to shore, in a calmer spot. With my left hand I kept the tension on the line. With my right hand I heaved at the anchor line, winning foot by foot in the current, cleating off the line after each heave. The boat drifted. The fish came along. With one oar I managed to correct the heading, and when I bumped the rocks at the northeast corner of the Pool helping hands grabbed the boat. I stepped out onto the shallow shelf, where the current eddies create a calm spot. The fish, tired now, came in. A new friend with a big net scooped up the big salmon and handed me the net. I removed the fly, lifted the salmon out of the net, and a woman named Joanne Taylor aimed her digital camera at us. The salmon went back in the water, where he took a few moments to recover, then swam into the depths.