If I'm Only Gonna Get One... 5/8

[jrodda]

Brought Jared in on the bite tonight. 1700-2000. 5-8mph wind in the face, 1-3' swell. More kelp in the water though. And tons of by-the-wind sailors. And like a dozen dead sea birds! Normally whatever about dead birds but there's obviously something going on so it was sad and concerning.

Early on I hooked a big piece of kelp with the KM and couldn't grab it in the wash. Finally got a hold of it after a couple minutes, the KM popped out, and I felt a weird pain in my finger. Turns out I somehow got kelp lodged under my fingernail...and at the same time my favorite pliers fell off my belt into the wash, never to be seen again.

Switched to a c-rig because Jared piled up 3 in short order. I pulled 20 yards off all my Red Label fluoro spools before this session, but didn't seem to help. First bite, set the hook on a presumed croaker and...whole rig gone. WTF! Immediately threw a tantrum. Jared had some Shimano fluoro to share so I put some of his 12# on for another c-rig. 5 minutes later I hooked up to something I couldn't turn for a minute, and was very glad I had a different source of leader for it. Played it all the way in, narrowly avoiding a big kelp patty, and slid up a donkey of a croaker. New PB at 17.5". Never thought I would break my old 17" record from when I was 12, but here it is!







Worth the trouble of the day.

Proceeded to snap off that leader somewhere along the braid 5 minutes later. Fish Gods Giveth, Fish Gods Taketh Away. In the last year of surf fishing I don't think I had ANY line failures of any kind from any section, and now I'm up to at least 7 failures from 3 different batches of line in the last 3 days. It's not the guides/rod/reel since most of the breaks are within a foot of the leader knots. Might just buy the shimano fluoro for employee price and move on. Seems good enough quality.

I decided to tie the next KM straight to braid, and do as much standing and talking as walking and fishing. Jared ended the night with 5 croaker and 4 perch, plus a fouled bat ray, to my one croaker. But if I'm only gonna get one...

[vdisney]

Right on Jeremy, many congrats on your PB

[Tim524]

 Quality Croaker, bummer about the line !

[Latimeria]

Man, he was toasting you with numbers though!  lol, just kidding.  Dude, Nice Yellowfin!  That's probably twice as Big as Koga's biggest YFC (at least of what he claims)

Seriously, nicely done in fishing and reporting!