Can’t Win Em All
Well, after a couple of great Bluefin trips, we were due for a shocker. Yesterday was our day. It was an emotional rollercoaster. Started pretty slow…no marks or birds and only a few of the 40-50 boats in the area had caught or lost one fish after a few hours of fishing. Not a good sign. Last couple trips we’d seen fish marks and/or caught fish within the first hour of fishing. At this point we were thinking the tuna had left the area and the bite was about over. Around 11 we hook up on a troll bite. It was a 6ft Mako shark…not the Bluefin we were going for, but stoked to get a little action and have something in the box. Right around this time a thick fog bank starts approaching. Fog is a nightmare out on the ocean, esp when there’s 40 boats around and everyones trolling. Thankfully the fog stayed about quarter mile away from the line we were fishing. About an hour or so later we come up on a nice slick with a small mark under it. We stop the boat and drop a jig down to the depth we marked the fish. No dice on the jig bite so we start driving the boat again to get the baits trolling. Couple seconds later..BOOM!!! a MONSTER crushes the drifting long rigger bait. We immediately knew this was a huge fish and we had to stop its initial run to have a chance at landing it. It was spooling the reel so fast I’d never seen anything like it. Its hard to describe the feeling you get when a giant fish is spooling your biggest reel (which is the biggest/strongest reel on the market, a TLD130 w/ 30 pounds of drag and 250 lb braid line on). It looked like we hooked up to an 18 wheeler. We were even chasing the fish with the boat and it wouldn’t stop. For 5 minutes straight this tuna was taking line.To eliminate the possibility of getting completely spooled (have the fish take all of the line from the reel), Drew added some drag to the line. Almost immediately the fish broke the 250 lb line. Heartbreak. We’ll never really know how big that beast was, but there’s no doubt it was huge (wait till you see my video footage of the fish spooling the line!!). So at this point we’re all really bummed. That was our fish…our chance at landing a trophy bluefin. We get our baits back out there and start trolling again. About 30 minutes later we come up on the nicest mark of the day. We drop the jig down there and after 2 pumps BOOM! another nice fish. Doesn’t feel nearly as big as the first one but solid nonetheless. Yes!! morale level comes way back up. We fight the fish for an hour. It’s an exhausting fight using jigging rod/reel. I give Drew a beer while he’s fighting the fish. We knew we had him at this point. We see it a few times on the surface. Prob 200+ pound bluefin. Get it 15 ft from the boat. We’ve got the gaff ready, adrenaline pumping again. Pop! Breaks off. I dont know if it was the celebratory beer or what, but that tuna made a last second run and free’d himself. Another heartbreaker. 2 sizable bluefin and both broke off. Silence for a while. By then its getting late and a 15 mph wind had started kicking up a 3-5 foot at 4 seconds wind chop for the ride home. 4 ft at 4 second wind chop is miserable in a 23 ft boat, esp when you’re driving straight into it. At that point we were 38 miles from the ramp. Took us 3 hours of loud, obnoxious beating and banging to get back. We made it back safely. I guess thats fishing! Here’s a few photos I grabbed along the way. I’ve been primarily filming the last 3 trips and will be making an edit/episode soon. Some great footage to sort through! Check back.
