The wife battles a yellowfin while another is hanging in the rod holder.
Day Fished: 9/16/2000
Bait / Lures Used: sardines, feathers, Maurader plug
Water Temp.: 68
Weather: Clear
Seas: Choppy
Report: OOOOOHHHHHHHH this report is going to be a hard one to tell but here goes.
My wife and I went out fishing yesterday for her birthday. We hopped on Jofishmore's new boat "Sea Fire" and headed way down south (80 miles) where the reports said they were nailing them. The day started off kind of slow but by noon we had limits of football yellowfin, most of which came from quadruple jig strikes. Also mixed in were some of the biggest skipjack that I have seen in a while. (12-15 pounders, all released) Lots of chatter about bigeyes over 100 pounds on the radio so I was sure to drag a big lure behind the boat at all times. (the little 8-pound yellowfin were smacking the 12 inch marlin lure!) We started heading in around noon and started fast trolling while I cleaned our fish. Somewhere in the 50 mile range we had a double hookup on the yellowfin. Busted one off and got the other on board along with a bunch of tangled lines from the other rigs. I told Joe to go ahead and head back in while I untangled and set the troll lines back out. At this point I got purple and black Maurader untangled first (on #100 test setup) so I set that back out first and tended to the other tangled rigs. We didn't get more than 100 yards when the Maurader setup starts screaming! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! I picked it up out of the holder and knew right away this fish was much bigger than anything we hooked today. The fish made several muscle straining runs and pulled out the #100 test like it was in free-spool. Then he went deep and the "dead-weight" battle was on. I have never caught a bigeye before and this was unlike any tuna I have ever hooked. The massive power of this fish was incredible. Using the rail as a cheater bar, I winched the fish in, inch by inch when all of a sudden after about 20 mins into the fight, "bink" the line goes slack. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, my heart sank down to my stomach. Well there went my first shot at landing a bigeye. I reeled back up the purple and black Maurader which now had big teeth marks on it. I looked at the tandem hooks dangling from it and said ddddoooooooohhhhh! I knew better than to use tandem hooks for big tuna, something I learned a few years back when I lost several big bluefin on the iron with treble hooks. I guess I wasn't thinking today. Oh well, a lesson learned. I'm off to the tackle store to buy some large SINGLE hooks for all of my trolling lures. Until next time, HOOOOOOOOOKUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating: Excellent
