wild and wet

So it's cloudy, cool, raining on and off softly. Perfect weather to catch some smallmouth. Or so I thought. Well fast forward three hours. I'm wet, really wet. Starting to feel a bit cold. And how many strikes have I had? Exactly zero. But I did land a smallmouth. I hook a line. I begin to pull it in hand over hand to get it out of the river and it begins to pull back. It's an 11 or 12 inch smallmouth with a tube halfway down it's throat and 35 feet of line trailing behind it. It looked and acted in great shape when I released it.
So anyways I've thrown minnow plugs, crankbaits, swimbaits, grubs, skirted jigs, pretty much the whole kitchen sink at them and Zippo. Nada. It's getting along towards evening and there is this one last hole. It's about a cast and a half across and twice that long. And the current roars in and roars out. And just for good measure there is all kinds of concrete rubble and boulders in it. I mean who couldn't catch a smallmouth in a place like that on an evening like this? Me. So sometimes when smallmouth have lockjaw I've found I can still catch a few by throwing as close as I can to big boulders in fast current. Even better is bouncing my lure off them. So I tried that. A few casts in and I throw right up against this big chunk of concrete rubble. My swimbait sinks a second or two then Thump! I set the hook and it's no smallmouth. I've got a medium action rod and 8lb pound test. Both of which are right at the breaking point as line slowly but powerfully pulls off the reel. This fish just slowly circles the hole as my rod is bent into a c shape. My arm is really starting to get tired. The fish then swims upstream thru the boulders into the run. I'm wading in like waist deep trying to clear the rock as it just slowly kind of goes wherever it wants. And then circles. My arm is really tired now. Then the fish swims back upstream to where the water is pouring over a slab of concrete that's acting like a 6 foot long lowhead in the riffle. Well it swims right up under it!. I guess like a lowhead the water going over had carved out a hole. So there I am with my line going right up under this big slab in the middle of a rushing deep run. And I can feel the fish just kind of throbbing on the line. So I wade closer and it's getting deeper. And closer and now I'm like mid chest. I'm on tiptoes inching towards this rock the rod up over my head and fast approaching neck deep. When it swims back out and begins to circle around me. I try to wallow out between it and the rock but it's too deep. It starts back up there and I remember reading a story about a guy fighting a giant trout that said you pull in the direction you don't want the fish to go so it will pull the other way. So I put the rod over as far as I can towards the rock and pull the fish towards the rock. Sure enough the fish lumbers away downstream towards the main hole. I follow as best I can. Now the problem is that below this hole is like 100 yards of six inch deep riffle. If the fish gives up and goes down the riffle there is no way I'll be able to keep it on. And the fish (and me) is looking tired. But we are both in the middle of this pool and no where to land the fish. Finally it's pretty whipped and right there. I grab it's jaw in waist deep water. Which of course gives it new life and me less skin on my hand but I hold on and wade ashore. After a few pics I find a quiet backwater to release it in. It lays there wore out but working it's gills and looking okay. After all it's a shovelhead and tough as nails so it will make it. Me I'm not so sure about. I set down half out of the water like two feet from the fish. After a minute or two it slowly swims back into the pool. I set a while longer.