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So Julie calls me up yesterday and says we are going on her boat bassing and tilefishing. My boat is down and dont have any plans, so 6am off we go. Not gonna have a big weather window, so we opt to stay inshore and look for togs. We start off at one wreck that was in shallower, but still an hour from lynnhaven, and its pretty slow there. Fished it for 2 hours and caught one dinky tog and only a few other bites. The water looks pretty calm, so we decide to shoot on out another long way. It wasnt really that bad on Julie and Robin's boat because it goes so fast, but it was still pretty cold out. So we get to the next wreck at about 11 am. We decide we are only gonna have about two hours to fish it because the weather is supposed to kick up something nasty and we don't want to be stuck way out there in whats coming. We set down and immediately start catching bass. Most are small but there are some decent ones mixed in. We pick up a couple and the anchor pulls. This would end up happening twice. Keep in mind we are only fishing for two hours here and its a time consuming pain when the anchor pulls. So finally the third time we get hooked, it seems to hold. Julie is angry because she says we are off the wreck and we should remove to get on it. Robin and I and both catching seabass and feel wreck so we just stay in the same spot. Julie resentfully drops her little tiny rod spooled up with 8# test tog rigged and baited up with crab down hoping for a tog while me and robin drop down squid for bass. After about a half hour, the bass start to slow down some and I'm just kind of lolligagging and burning time. And then it happened. Julie winds up and sets the hook. I thought she was snagged and then it started pulling drag. Me and her both looked at each other and I said " you done hooked another eel?". She said I think so, because we had just caught about a 30# conger not even 5 minutes before. She would gain line and then it would blister off into the deep. She almost had the fish to the boat three times and it took her all the way back to the bottom in the wreck. The final time just as a precaution, I asked Robin to pass me the net. He passes it to me and I look back and at first glance, I thought this tog was about 25#. My jaw dropped. I scrambled real quick and I'm not even sure whether it was me or Robin that netted the thing. All I know is that joker was on the deck in the blink of an eye. A round of high fives ensues. Robin looks up the womens tog record on his little cheat sheet and says the womens record is 10#-14. Julie knows she has it beat, dances around, and throws it on the handscale, where the readout is 15.5#. Now its time for pictures. Julie goes and gets her camera and begins cleaning herself up, getting the bait out of her hair and off her fingers. Robin is kind of helping her and getting the camera ready. I look down at the fish and something is wrong and I gotta fix it. The problem seems to be that this thing has about 3 pounds of ass hanging out of it. I push it in once and it pops right back out. Then again. And again. Me and this fish went through this for a good thirty or fourty five seconds before it finally gets straightened out. I could have swore I saw the fish smile at me and I thought it was gonna ask me for a cigarette there for a second. I wasn't really paying attention to Robin and Julie but when I turn around to see what they are doing, the just have this stunned look on their face, like "what are you and that fish doing together?". I can only imagine how it looked after I think about it. I was seriously going at it with it for a moment. We get that all straightened out and the result is the great picture you have there. Soon after, we decide it was good enough and time to go home. Beat the weather home, weighed the fish, and now Dr. Ball has yet another pending IGFA world record. Her fish weighed 15 pounds 10 ounces and shattered the womens 8 pound test world record. The fish was big enough to break every record in the womens division that was listed including the 12, 16, 20, and 30# test divisions. Congratulations Julie. A big thanks to you and Robin for taking me out and look forward to next time. One more thing... Just for the record, this fish was 30'' long. Thats just an inch shorter than the monster 23# tog Julie caught a few years ago. This fish also appeared to be a male. It didn't gut it or anything but it had a flat haed and the right colors for it. If it was a male, it's the biggest one I have ever seen. Anyone who is curious, Steve has the fish on display over at Long Bay Pointe, along with some crabs for sale.
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