Captain Ahab (9/26)

[Latimeria]

Well, it was a tough one yesterday, but let me start from the beginning.

I decided I was taking the Boma out with my buddy Craig and we were gearing big.  No bass gear, only 40# was the lightest and 100# was the heavy troller.  I even got to tie up my Marlin lure as I just wanted to see what it looked like trolling a 9/0 and Marlin gear on my little bass boat.   



We left at dark and before the sun could even come up we heard the bait barge was out of bait. We proceeded to run to the kelp line and load up with Spanish Macks to head offshore.  The Spanish were all huge!  They looked more like small yellowtail than mackerel.  All were 12-14 inches.
It was a little bumpy since we were weighed down with extra gas and all, but I was ready for the big troll hoping for Marlin or Wahoo to take the cake.  I have to say that it was weird setting up all the trollers on the boat as I really don't know where we were going to put anything if we caught it, but we would have figured something out.





We trolled and stopped at every paddy.  There were dozens of big paddies out there, but they were only covered with mouse yellowtail.  You can't even call them Rats since they were so small.  We literally trolled for 6 hours without a bite.  We worked some high spots and trolled along the drop off for nothing.  The trollers looked great in the water and I had to switch tanks as I was sucking up more gas than I was expecting.



We also were getting boxed in by the Red Cross super ship.  Not sure what they were doing, but kept going North and south literally around us all morning.  That is one big boat, but unfortunately ran some nice paddies over.



We started trolling for home expecting the skunk when we saw some weird huge dolphin milling around.  Not exactly sure what they were, but were around and really dark and 10-14 feet.  We stopped and tried to soak our last remaining Spanish by them, but they swam off and we just enjoyed the quiet and calmness after all that trolling.  About 10 minutes into the soak, I said to Craig... Dude, I just got picked up!  It was a weird bite... almost a lazy bite and it was just swimming slowly with my bait.  I loaded up the line and set the hook... WTF!  I thought it was a shark at first since it didn't seem phased, but it had way more mass than I was expecting.  Basically I could just hold on.

After a long steady run and I would say a short fight, the hook popped out.  Not a nick on the line or fray anywhere.  So weird as I couldn't really tell what it was.  I'm very good at ID'ing the fish from the fight, but I have never had something feel like this and leave no clues.

All of a sudden craig says "Hey dude... my bait either came back from the dead or I got a fish on".  It wasn't ripping out, but running at a steady medium pace.  Craig loads up the rod and sets the hook.. Bam, Holy crap!  The drag was set at about 20#'s as he was loaded up with 80# braid with 70 yards of 60# Big Game.  I was clearing the deck and started the motor to prepare for pursuit when it stopped running out and dove straight down.  I'm talking straight up and down and tried to use the boat to angle his head up to turn him, but it wasn't happening.  Craig was tightening the drag little by little until he said "At what point do I button down the drag?"  I ran up to see over 3/4 of the spool gone!  I looked at the fish finder and saw we were in 1330 feet of water... What the f@ck!  I tried to turn the drag down on his reel, but it was already maxed out.  He stopped it a few times, but it was merely taking a break before its next run!  You could see the occasional tail beat on the line as it headed down, but it wasn't fast like a tuna, but more a slower methodical thumping.  If this was a marlin, he would have stayed up at the surface for at least a longer period and maybe showed himself, but I was lost of what it could even be!

Literally after what was a one sided battle and with less than a dozen wraps of line left and way over 1000 feet of line out, the line broke.  He was so deep that the rod was bending just reeling up the line which took him 5 minutes to recover it all! 

No frays, no nothing but a clean clip of the line.

We trolled the area a bit, but had to head in as we were running out of gas and it was getting late.  On the way in, my brain was going over all of the fish species and what on earth it possibly could be.  Due to the way it sounded and no frayed line even with all of the tail beats, I ruled out a shark or at least kept that at a minimum possibility.  I thought marlin, but they are pretty much pussies and would have stayed at the surface and did something to clue us in.  Thought maybe a Bluefin tuna, but the tail slaps didn't seem tuna and it didn't take the bait like a tuna.  It was a lazy bite and took the fish a little bit to realize he was hooked.  I then thought it was realistically a possibility of being a swordfish.  I didn't see anything and have never hooked one before, but knowing their morphology and general habits, it seemed a real possibility.

Once again, we hooked some true monsters and I farmed them AGAIN..  It's actually messing with my head and I need to right the ship again.  Oh well, I can't let this white whale go all Ahab on me, but that was a difficult loss as we worked all day for those single bites each and both came up short.  I even thought I had the right gear for the task, but I was proven wrong. 

Time to freshen the batteries and clear my mind.  I might need to read Moby d!ck again so I don't repeat (moral) history and get consumed with the one that got away.

Thanks for reading and hopefully next time I will have pics of a boat covered in fish blood along with one smiling captain and fisherman!

Until next tide!

[sasquatch]

Ugh.

[skrilla]

Gnarly.

[Pinoyfisher]

Like I've said before, you're a fishy a$$ mofo!!! Landed or not...

[greyhoundfan]

Bummers Tom..I can feel your pain in the post. 

[Eric H]

That was a great read.

So cool that you went Big on such a small boat.

Bummer on the lost fish, would love to have seen it.

[raychavez91]

Very good read dude, you'll get em soon enough, gonna be hard to slap a sticker on there for a pic tho lol

[spideyjg]

Sorry to hear of then losses but think about you swing for the fence you are going to strike out a lot.
Why not dream big that it was a large GW that took the bait. A large 14+ foot GW is not going to be fazed by some 80 lb line.

It probably was just mildly annoyed by the drag.

Jim