Under gunned

[bigfish4me]

I finally found my way back to saltwater over the past weekend after a far too long absence. I originally planned on dragging my boat down and putting it in my uncles slip since his boat is out of the water and i would only be down for a few days. A buddy of mine was down during the week and offered to leave his 18 footer in the slip, since my cousin was down as well it was a generous and convienent option. Sunday morning i wake up nice and early, the wife and kids are all sleepin away i slip on out at 5:30 am and head off to search out the back waters of sea isle NJ for possibly a weakie or some flatfish. Now we all know how finnicky older motors can be and they all pretty much have thier own combination to get em started right. Well cruising through the no wake zone i notice fish pushing bait pretty good so i idle up a bit to start my drift and the motor stalls. Ok no biggie right...well it wont start back up and the sod bank is rapidly approching so i toss the hook and luckily it grabs. Like a tool i procede to flood the engine so i have some time on my hands i may as well toss a bucktail around and see if anyone is home. In south jersey if you do find some weakies around they are usually spikes around 15- 20" so i was using my light outfit, a shimano sedona 2000 with a light action shimano rod and 15 lb braid. Second cast with a 3/8 oz pink and white bucktail tipped with a minnie and whamo, im hooked up and the fish charges the boat. All i could do was watch as a solid 36-40" striper streaked not 6 ft from the stern almost laughing at me.....bucktail flowing out of its huge mouth, and then proceeded to dump the spool on my way too lite outfit. With around 3 wraps of line left i did the inevitable and grabbed the spool to lock it up and as fast as it happened it was over....head hung low i retrieved what was left of my line and collected myself. 1st thing was re rig a bigger outfit...done...made a few casts and nobody home so ill get the motor started right.....wrong, this some bitch still dont want to kick over, so i fish some more and the only other bites i had were from the 2 or 3 hundred black flies that had me at thier mercy, i was litterally up the creek without a paddle. Would have loved to give chase to that fish but being on the hook i had no chance with that outfit it was definitly a case of bringing a knife to a gunfight. Stripers that size this late in the year in south jersey in the back waters are definitly not the norm, it was nice to be on the water as the sun was coming up and even nicer to lay into a quality fish but dam it would have been nice to land that fish on that little outfit. I finally got the motor started and headed for the slip, my buddy was having some issues with the motor but it was running decent for him thru the week, but like i said you need to know the right combination and appearently i didnt, but like i said it beat the snot out of not being on the water at all.

[WAHOONBOX]

WELCOME TO YOUR WORLD ...I MEAN OUR WORLD BRO! AWESOME STORY!