Our hands actually hurt from fighting big fish. I netted a nice fat Rainbow that jumped 5 times. Every time the fish jumped - you risked losing it. We let the rod do the work for us. Once in the weeds - the fish were impossible to land.
Natural drift is the key to fooling the large native rainbows.
The largest fish we caught was over 20 inches, and a drag-free drift was the recipe for success. This is probably the reason I was not convinced that the type of fly could make that big of a difference. We could have waved a myriad of flies in front of these fish - but they wanted tiny beadheads. We fished with strike indicators - and I quickly learned why. One second late with the counter strike, and the fish would be long gone.