Fred,
I know the bar you refered to well. One must walk or boat into it for over 10 years now. I have a very found memory of walking in to it (and as you know, it is a 1 mile walk) one fine March day some 7 years ago. I made the mistake of stringing up my big 16 ft 2-hander at the parking area and cranking down the drag quite a bit to keep the line from being pulled out by brush on my way in.
When I got to the bar, found it deserted, and so decided to start fishing in the bottom third of the run. I simply yanked out my line since I alrady had the fly attached to the tippet and started to fish. Big mistake because I neglected to loosen the drag and disc drags can be cranked down way to tightly for 12 pound tippets.
About cast number 10, a guide with 2 dudes beached at the top of the run and the dudes stated fishing. The guide wandered down the bar to see how I was doing (he was someone I knew) and about the time he was half way down, I had a fish pick up my large spey fly about 20 feet in to the cast around 100 feet out. The fish didn't feel that big, I thought it was about 13 pounds, so I didn't even give a thought to the amount of drag I had on the reel.
The fish first moved over toward the bar and upstream and I simply stripped in the line to keep it under tension. Then the fish decided it was time to move to the other side of the river and began to do so in a rather rapid fashion. The line was slipped through my fingers I had stripped in and when the fish got on the reel..... Well let's just say it stopped the fish rather abruptly. The fish came out of the water when this happened and the tippet snapped like it was cobweb. That's when I realized I forgot to back off the drag.
The real aggrevating part about this was the fish happened to be one of the Skagit monsters. The guide finished his walk down to see me and told me that I wasn't supposed to break off those over 20 pound fish, especially when his dudes could see it all.
Yes, I said a few words about what a dumb &%#& I was.