Quote:
Originally Posted by Slingah
the ones that get away....
please share.....I need support...
do you scream?? swear?? or maybe even cry 
does it haunt you??
I'm good for 1-2 a year.... 
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Matt,
I would like to have at least one of the two I dropped that night we fished last year, but here's my real take:
Catch the fish first and weight them later. The unknown always leads you to believe that the one that got away was much larger than it actually was.
Case in point:
Last fall at the vineyard I had the derby winner on the end of my line, my knees knocking, ready to

if the fish got off. The thing hit like a freight train and took a ton of line. I couldn’t stop the thing. When I slid the 16# fish up at my feet I nearly did

in astonishment that a fish that small took all that line on me.
Shortly after I returned from the island, I was fishing Narragansett and hooked the RI state record. I couldn’t believe it but when I slid the fish up on the shore, it was nearly identical in size to the fish I hooked on the Island earlier in the week. They were both little buck bass hooked in the hinge of their jaw. Had I lost either of the two fish, my fishing career would have two painful asterisks next to it.
On the flip side, the two largest fish I've gotten recently looked much smaller in the water than they actually turned out to be. This just underscores the catch first, weigh them later attitude I live by.