FISHING TALL TALES Page 4
COLORADO
I was invited over to a friends lake for a afternoon of fishing. I don’t think it gets a lot of serious pressure, but thought
I would give it my best shot. From the first cast of my sweet beaver crawdad bait it was non stop action.... I landed 22 fish, 6 over
5 pounds, and no small fish really. I missed a lot from short hits and pullin the trigger to soon on my part. After I ran out of plastics,
I tied on a jig and pig and slammed a couple of cats. The last one was truly an awesome fish and quite a fight. The big guy was more
than enough for a big meal the next day. It was a great day fishing.
CALIFORNIA
My second memorable fish was a fish I didn't even get to the boat. I was in San Diego on business, and took a client out
on a daytrip boat to fish for tuna. We spent a good deal of the day just chasing down fish. The method the captain used was to drive
around looking for kelp paddies. These were clumps of floating kelp 20 to 30 miles from shore, that attracted bait fish and hence
schools of tuna.
We had been driving around for awhile with no fish, but I didn't mind. The day was absolutely beautiful and it was
my first day ever on the ocean. We saw a pod of whales, and a huge shark that followed the boat for awhile.
We finally pulled up next
to a paddy, and the captain starts barking out orders. There's a bunch of tuna down there. Now this is one of those daytrip party
boats with 20-25 guys all throwing baits towards the paddy at the same time. Guys start hookingup all over the boat and guys are tripping
over each other trying to stay untangled.
I don't tend to like being in the middle of the crowd, so I walk up the deck towards the
front of the boat and cast out off to the side of the paddy instead of right at it like everyone else. I've never fished with a deep
sea rig before and don't really have any skill at handling the reel (like a baitcaster with a freespooling reel).
I get the bait out
about 20 yards and feel pretty good about myself for having made a cast and not creating a birdsnest. About 5 seconds go by and ...
WHAM!!!!! It feels like a jetski drove by and grabbed my line. Never before or since have I felt power like that on the end of the
line. It was incredible. I had the tuna on for only about 15-20 seconds, but man o man was it fun. My inexperience led me to try and
thumb the reel to slow down the fish's first run. After burning most of the skin off my thumb I ended up breaking the fish off. I
didn't land the fish , but I'll never forget it, and anxiously look forward to an opportunity to get on the ocean again.