Post you wildest/funniest catch story...

[zar2754]

I'll start it off, i have some others that ill add once the thread gets going....


When: Summer 2008
Where: 19fathom Lump
What: BFT Jigging
Why: Why not...

Scenario: We are approaching the 19 just as the sky is begining to lighten, i get out the jigging set ups, rig up the captains to get him in the water , i rig up two more rods for Jim and Rob, Jim insist he rig his own ok....surely.
we begin our first drift over the lump through a couple scattered boats who are anchored and chunking, we see one boat hooked up in the distance, and another not to much further off, boom captain is on, little head shake this way, little head shake that way, bye bye..... , continue the drift the marks finally show up, big red blobs 10' off the bottom, i state this fact as i am standing right next to the raymarine display, BAM Jim is on, good good, every one keeps jiggin, i take a couple cranks off the bottom, put my rod in the holder, put on a pair of gloves and get the gaff, im standing next to Jim, i he proceeds to put a good whoopin on the fish and i see color, it is at this point that Jim yells "SHIT" and his rod staightens like a broom stick, i immediately think the fish broke off, nope not this time, Jims wind on swivel (remember the one he insisted on rigging) came through the guides and "some-how" his knot did not stand up to the test. TO OUR SUPRISE THE ROD doubles back over??!! what the hell the knot just broke, i saw it happen...what i didnt see happen was the teeny tiny wind on swivel get caught sideways in second to last guide!, we do a frantic scramble to grab the leader before the swivel lets loose and the fish is gone with a new lip ring, Jim grabs the leader, and i using my quick thinking (or so i thought) grab a rod out of the helm rod holder while jim is leadering a fish that A. is not ready to be leadered B. is still 25' deep, i clip the dangling swivel onto the rods snap swivel so jim no longer has to leader and angry deep bluefin. I begin to crank the fish in and "dink", wait a minute idiot you cant crank this giant snap swivel through these guides!!!, well i guess we are leadering this fish after all, at least we have back up if he makes a run, the captain comes over and him and jim start leadering the fish in, foot by painstaking foot, the fish comes to the surface with 25' of 100# flouro hanging all over our feet, i reach for the AFTCO and THUMP! sink that steel hard and deep into this miracle of a catch, i sling him aboard, and its beers and high fives all around...to this day Jim still cant figure out why his swivel "somehow" broke, im pretty sure i know why...this more than anything i have ever written sounds like a true, undeniable "fish story" , hell looking back i can hardly believe it, but it is true as the night is dark, and as Jim is goofy.

-JOSH

[WAHOONBOX]

I ONCE SEEN A KNOT BREAK WITH A FISH ON....THE KNOT HUNG IN THE RODTIP'S GUIDE.....I MEAN ROD TIP BENT OVER DOUBLE.....WE HANDLINED 100 FEET OF MONO/LEADER SUCCESSFULLY


THANKS FOR SHARING JOSH AND MIRACLES DO HAPPEN!

[bigfish4me]

Our first sword fish, we were on an overnight chunking trip on the ursula out of sea isle, The mate....Josh i think you know him ..was Al Crudelle....one of our guys had had enough yellow fin action and drug a deck chair up on the bow to drop a deep line for swords and catch some zzzzz's. It must have been 2 hours before he was woke up by the clicker screaming, after a few laps around the boat the fish finally found the anchor line. It took a while but 3 of us finally pulled the boat close enough to get a hand on the fish end of the line and thats when he did what i least expected.....out came the knife and with one swipe he handed me the line and said....back of the boat junior, now i had about 6' of line between me and that swords freedom...and he was pulling pretty hard, i get in the back corner and the fish is lighting up and i am about as stretched out as i can be without going for a swim...but i aint letting go. Al grabs me by the belt loops and ties a quick knot...son of a bi#*#....it wont fit through the guides.....now i have about 3' of line and a seriously pissed off sword on the other end for take #2....got the knot tied and on the reel, an hour later he absolutely stiffed a 140 lb sword with the poon.....it was team work at its finest and my man Al was cool , calm and collected.....as a matter of fact we never even woke the capt up for the whole affair....bottom line was we got the fish and a memory that will last forever.

[zar2754]

Our first sword fish, we were on an overnight chunking trip on the ursula out of sea isle, The mate....Josh i think you know him ..was Al Crudelle....one of our guys had had enough yellow fin action and drug a deck chair up on the bow to drop a deep line for swords and catch some zzzzz's. It must have been 2 hours before he was woke up by the clicker screaming, after a few laps around the boat the fish finally found the anchor line. It took a while but 3 of us finally pulled the boat close enough to get a hand on the fish end of the line and thats when he did what i least expected.....out came the knife and with one swipe he handed me the line and said....back of the boat junior, now i had about 6' of line between me and that swords freedom...and he was pulling pretty hard, i get in the back corner and the fish is lighting up and i am about as stretched out as i can be without going for a swim...but i aint letting go. Al grabs me by the belt loops and ties a quick knot...son of a bi#*#....it wont fit through the guides.....now i have about 3' of line and a seriously pissed off sword on the other end for take #2....got the knot tied and on the reel, an hour later he absolutely stiffed a 140 lb sword with the poon.....it was team work at its finest and my man Al was cool , calm and collected.....as a matter of fact we never even woke the capt up for the whole affair....bottom line was we got the fish and a memory that will last forever.

very nice! and a happy ending to boot

[fmoore]

My dad's first tuna...we're bailing haddock, just one after another all day in about 250 FOW. My dad is dropping back down with clams on a double hook rig with a 16 ounce sinker. At about 150 feet down, his line goes slack. He started to reel and all of a sudden the line comes tight and line starts peeling off the reel. We had never caught anything bigger than a good sized cod at the time and we were guessing tuna or shark,...not that we knew anything about either. This thing comes to the side of the boat and it was the biggest fish I've ever seen in person. I gaff the thing and set it on the deck as we both stared in amazement. Had the dog with us that day...a little mini schnauzer. The dog loved the blood.

We looked a little more closely at the double hook rig my dad was using and found that the 16 oz sinker was gone. Vanished. Never to be seen again. Can't figure that one out to this day.

Here's the pic...note the cod setup in the rod holder. 8 foot long rod...ouch.

[cloudnine9]

When I first started getting into fishing a mate took us out bottom bashed the 24fth line of the coast we hadn't been there before and spotted a charter boat and thought lets follow it to some good ground.
anyway 30 minutes later we where at the 36 fth line and in the company of 2 other charter boats drifting a small reef area that had a few pinicals as the main feature.
we bait up and drop 2 hook dropper rigs and where on,
yellowtail Kingfish.after boating about 4 or 5, my mate hooks up to a apparently to a good fish he fought it for a short while in the mean time I'm hooked up at the same time.
were standing side by side and his line goes slack.I'm still fightin mine and it went into overdrive when I finaly get my fish to the surface we find my rig of 2 5/0 trebbles and 10lb kingy on the top trebble and hooked on the last hook of the bottom trebble the 60lb swivel and full rig my mate just lost including the 2 fish he was fighting.
I don't know the odds of hooking a swivel through the eye in 36fth of water after a bust off.
the guys on the boat that were there couldn't beleave it and if they hadn't seen it they would have said I was full of shite.
cheers Cloud 9

[Jack Hexter]

We were trolling for salmon off the West Coast of Vancouver Island when one of the rods started to just act funny. It was down 130'. I picked it up and it just didn't feel right so I popped it out of the clip and felt some weight, just enough to pull some drag very slowly. Actually felt like some kelp. As it got to the surface, it looked a lot more pink than kelp, but I continued to crank it in where we saw a humboldt squid. By friend grabbed the net and as he tried to net the creature, it backed away. I brought the thing back and my buddy, now aware of what the squids intentions were, netted him flawlessly, BUT as he lifted the thing from the water, it SQUIRTED, about 5 gallons of water hit my buddy square in the face. A little pounding with a meat hammer and that sucker ate real good.