Biggest fish I've caught in a long time

It is spring break for me and typically most years I'm trying to squeeze in a few more trips to the snowboarding hill.  Well, this year has been terrible for snow.  We pretty much didn't have a winter up in the Pacific Northwest.  I figured I could sit on the couch and fritter away my week off, or I could do something about it.  

I decided to head up and visit with my folks for a few days.  I was able to help Dad split and stack some wood yesterday.  Since I have a desk job, my midsection is growing these days so doing some manual labor is a good thing.  Although, after a few hours of splitting, hauling and stacking firewood I discovered muscles I forgot I had.  Today we went out for some fishing.  March isn't the best month for fishing, but it is good to get out anyway.  As the saying goes "a bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work."  

We drove up to the Kootenai River up by Libby and decided to throw a few lures in to see if anything would bite.  The water level was waaaaaay down.  It was cool to see a lot of the river features that are normally under 8 feet of water.  We found area that we both liked and decided to 'camp out' and work the area with a few different lures.  I threw in a Mepps spinner and thought I had it snagged.  The weird thing was that this "snag" didn't tighten my line.  I kept reeling in but the tension stayed constant.  I thought "this is weird, snags get tighter and tighter until you can't reel in."  Then I saw a silvery flash under the water and I thought "crap I have a fish on!"  When I pulled the fish into shallow water I saw that it was a bull trout and I would have to let it go.  I was able to get my lure back without really touching the fish at all.  I had Dad turn him sideways to get this picture.  After Dad let him go he swam back into the river with a quickness that indicated he was in decent shape.  

I should have had a measuring tape with me, but we estimate that this guy was somewhere between 20 and 24 inches.  I know Uncle Dave and Uncle Phillip catch monsters like this all the time but I haven't caught a fish this big since we lived in Idaho.  All in all it was a pretty fun day.