What a way to fish a Steelhead trip

[AuSableTrophyhunter]

I spent two days last week fishing for steelhead in the rapids of the St Mary's River with my wife and our guide, John Gulliani. The steelhead were slow because of unusually bright sun and warm air temps. The river stayed icy cold thanks to Lake Superior.
The last evening of the trip, John takes me down to a rapid with a big,deep tailout. I have a single weight fly on a 15 ft leader. The plan is to simply swing the fly across the rapids and dangle and move somewhere far away in the tailout.
I decide to simply cast across the rapid so I would have a tight line. I have my wife's new TFO ll ft switch rod and I cast one handed(dont know spey style) and cast 100 ft. The guide says this is "the cast, you will get one"... I feel the same. On the dangle I feel a take and I set hard on all that fly line below me. An Atlantic Salmon leaps about 10ft in the air and... throws the hook! There was little I could have done to prevent that as I am already almost into the backing on the hookup. It was spectacular and a long shot because the Atlantic was early, May 28, to be in that pool.
We slog back upstream for some final casts with a nymph setup for steelhead. I got lucky again. I hook up with a steelie that takes off immediately downstream and I am into the backiong before I move from the rock I was hiding behind. This was a big fish and when I got downstream , this fish headed straight across the river now and toward a hole in berm. So, I had to stop him . He stopped and I began to pump the rod and reel to bring him back. I will land this one. Ping! the 10lb tippet snaps. We dont get to see that fish. There are some fish that are not meant to be landed.