Thankfully, I've never had to contend with any sort of 'combat fishing.' I've seen photos of the opening day of trout fishing on some of the eastern rivers. I would prefer to stay home, even if I had to watch Oprah.
The most fun I ever had fishing was a week I spent at a fly-in lodge on the Hotlitna River in Alaska. I was the only one there for the whole week.
We caught a couple species of salmon, and one day we flew to a place to catch sheefish -- the tarpon of the north -- which was the topic of the article I was doing for Outdoor Life.
Best of all, another day we poled our way thru a 7' wide, 1/2-mile long shallow channel into a tiny back slough filled with reeds. It was circular opening in the reeds that was about 40-50 yrds. across. Once we anchored in the center, we never moved the boat. We got there at 7 a.m & didn't quit fishing until 10 pm.
Using 8 lbs. as our cut-off point, my fishing partner & I landed 102 northerns. Many were 15+ pounds. We didn't count the smaller ones, which probably would have added another 35-40 fish. Nearly always, we had more than one fish chasing the lure. By the time we were done, I was literally worn out. My largest was the 23 lb. I have on my trophy room wall. And we caught nearly all of them on bass-type spinnerbaits. The backstory on that choice is kind of humorous in itself.
On the way in, I had seen quite a few good pike in the 1/4 mile-long channel. So when we left, I tied on a red/white Lucky 13 & told the lodge owner to get his video camera ready. As he poled us along, I stood on the front seat of the boat like a gunslinger waiting to draw. The water wasn't much over 2 feet deep. If I saw a shadow, I cast to it. Everytime the lure hit the water, it took no more than two twitches before the surface erupted & a fish inhaled the surface plug. In a couple instances I had two fish fighting to get caught.