i know we've all heard a million of them. if you want the short
version, scroll to the last sentence. we were fishing out east on saturday and arrived on the scene greeted by tons and tons of life spread out as far as you could see. it looked really really good. we put lines in well short of the rest of the fleet. it looked so good that after 10 minutes of trolling i said 'i can't believe we haven't hooked up yet'. the sounder was showing a solid line of bait at about 80 feet and nice big red blobs underneath them with the occaisional slant mark which for me usually is followed by a clicker screaming. it wasn't another 5 minutes and 'BAM' short rod goes off. we got a little greedy and waited a second for another rod to go off, but it was apparent that it was a good fish so we decided to start clearing lines and get this one in the boat. that's when it happened. went to strike on the drag (28lbs) and he absolutely took off. never seen anything like it. it was like we were hooked to a bus. the line was dissappearing faster than i could have ever imagined. at this point it was obvious we were going to have to change our approach that has served well with fish to 150lbs. one guy frantically clearing rods, one guy on the rod, and one guy on the wheel. we start to turn 'full U' to chase him down while not cutting off the other 7 lines out there. and i am inching the drag past strike in hopes of at least slowing the bleeding (and realizing that the drag is also increasing as the line is disappearing right before my eyes). in what seemed like a matter of seconds, we were f ucked. it was clear. this fish was not stopping for us and we didn't have the skill or experience to chase him down. as it became more and more evident that he was going to take every last inch of the 550yards of 80lb line we had on the reel with that drag at sunset and the spool diameter the size of a half dollar, the thumb went on the spool to give one last attempt at stopping him, and SNAP when the line. it sounded like a giant tree limb snapping in a storm. we talked the rest of the day about what we could have done differently, and while i honestly think we never could have landed that fish w/the gear we were using, i do think we learned a lot about what it is going to take to get that 200-300lb fish. of course there's no telling how big he was, but he dumped that line with drag starting at 28lbs and ending somewhere around 80lb and he kept going faster and faster. the whole thing took what seemed like seconds...and we were left standing there looking at each other
short version: we got spooled by a big guy.
08-18-2008, 07:49 AM
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