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The team has now grown to where we take two boats and it's a good thing...On Tuesday night we went south 5 miles to the calmer water and found the fish...
Kevin Shiraki & Newton Leslie went on Newt's 27 Force, Mark Loera, Bill Rhee, myself and Lloyd Rewuski went on the Contender.
It looked good at our first stop, but we soon drifted a little outside of where we wanted to be, so we moved and set up back inside on the 800 fathom line, Dr.Bill decided he wanted to put out a rig for Tonbo (Albacore) because we had captured one two nights ago. As we heard something big splashing on the surface behind us I started to wonder, bam the 50 lb. Tonbo rig went off and line peeled. With a small 4/0 hook and 10 foot 130 fluorocarbon leader, it was only set up for smaller Tuna...
The fish came to the boat, but was heavy, not a Tuna for sure, we tried to get eyes on it, but it stayed just outside the Hydraglow...I am not sure if it really knew it was hooked at this point.
Then it took off about 200 yards and the seesaw battle was on. Dr. Bill harnessed in and went to work, after 2 hours he became more and more sure every minute it was a Thresher that would wake up and spool us, I told him we have to treat it like a Swordy because this is how they fight, besides DB deserved the work after putting the 50 out!!!
Keeping the drag at 18-20 lbs. and thumbing the spool a little was all he could do. Finally after some good boat maneuvering by Mark Loera the fish came to the boat and we could see the body facing away then it rolled over...SWORDY!!!!
We couldn't get it close enough for a gaff shot and it bolted again...Two hours later (total for 4.25 now) we had it back doing big circles under the boat, DB had the drag up a bit and it took us about 30 minutes to get it too the surface and get our Gaff shot (without grabbing the leader).
Total of 5.25 hours and the 148 was in the boat...We had caught similar fish in 15 minutes on 80, but the 50 with light leader and small hook was way under gunned for this fish...
Anyways great night Epic battle, we closed it off with a 400 lb. Mako with and even bigger one following too the boat that would not take the bait, we weren't really prepared to deal with the bigger one so our enthusiasm wasn't quite there, also it was 5:45 AM and we just a little exhausted...We had hooked DB'S Swordy at 9:00PM and landed it at 2:15AM.
Not the big one I have been predicting, but then again, we ain't don chasing just yet...The most disappointing thing about fighting this fish was all the big marks hanging around as we fought it...Definitely more fish holding in the area!!
Stay tunned and we'll find out..
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