chainsaw42

tuesday 6/19 we ran out to the nwc early and found some whales, some birds, some bait. not crazy life, but interesting enough. set out our spread of 5 squid bars (18" squid, assorted colors) & a yozuri swimmer. about 2 hours later a rod goes off and line is coming off fast. we had a new guy on the boat so the rod goes to him and he turns out to be a natural. he's got the rod bent like a pretzel and is having no trouble keeping massive pressure on this fish that is taking line w/30lb of drag whenever he wants. first see the fish around 20 minutes into the fight and he is big, estimated around 66". he decides he's not ready and goes for a swim. the guy on the rod can't believe how hard this fish is pulling and is smiling ear to ear as he is leaning back w/all of is 260lbs to keep the rod bent and the pressure on. he comes & goes to the boat another time and on the third trip to the boat he seems ready to give up. well i still can't go into details because it's too painful but he somehow rotated out of the hook in slow motion just as the gaff was readied. never got a shot to gaff him, he swam away real slowly. hopefully he made it. very hard one to lose. we had two bluefish over the next 2 hours (one was huge!) and then another bar goes off, no question it is a tuna this time. he's peeling line off like crazy and before we can even get the rod out of the arch and start to slow him down it just dies. reel in the bar only to find the stinger crimp let go. very hard to lose again. check all your bar crimps. i am not going to say where i got that bar, but suffice it to say i will not be getting another one from him. no chafe or thimble on these crimps. i never really inspected the bar construction differents before, but from now on i will stick to fisherman's outfitter bars. we carefully looked over all our bars (from a bunch of different sources) and the fisherman's outfitter bars are put together the best imho. it was a bittersweet day on the water to say the least.

sunday 6/25. we couldn't sleep all week, so we decided to give it another try yesterday at the nwc. sloppy early morning seas steadily subsided as the day went on and it was beautiful out there. unfortuantely, the fish seemed to have moved away. saw 3 whales all day. marked a couple of decent bait balls that the birds were working, but no fish. very rare for nwc, where there is usually tons and tons of life. i did hear that there were some fish to the south, but nothing earth shattering. oh well it is still june i guess.