Jumping makos at night are pretty common.
I've seen it over 1000 times. What's actually taking place is a super fast erratic swimmer running out of water. Landing in the boat is well simply like playing the lottery with your baits being the lure lol.
You just never know what can happen. Last season off the west end of Catalina alone at 1:00 AM I was swordfishing when meet by a 700 plus class titian missal mako that started things off by coming in and slurping down a giant squid filet oh so un lady like turning and twirling through the air slamming right in to my transom as I met her there to try and pick the rod up. As I was in mid air like some sort of cartoon heading for the flybridge I see her above the antennas off the port bow twisting flashing her big white belly as she revolved past the 3000 watts of light over and over again. At this point the closest thing I saw was the radio.
I putting in a call with my location asking for extraction if I was not heard from in 15 minutes. Yeah that's plenty of time to die LOL
I finally got the rod out of the holder when it was about spent.
After clearing the other sword rigs I finally got the rod over the windshield and throttled on and off at WOT retrieving some line trying to slow her down. Best way to do a big mako in is let her run as fast as she wants with little resistance especially on light tackle. The last sword I had hooked in this area was in the 500 lb. class so I naturally had the 80 out for the swords with only a 30 W out for the mako just off the transom with 60 lb. wire and a small circle hook. Long story short I got caught in the flyer hanging over the light pole and ripped my knuckle to the bone causing a pretty red stream with every lift of the rod decorating the boat from bow to stern. As the hours wore on I was reduced to making a decision of passing bleeding out then I had her at leader and made a decision to double wrap and bust out of the fight much the same as a tap out in a match. You see I know when I'm beat and she won fair and square.
She was just coming in to eye me up and down to what I looked like later after she was done doing to me what she was about to do on the trip to hell I saw coming in her fiery eyes. What a beautiful woman I've always loved the Amazonian.
Keith Poe
PO Box 2056
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
310-562-6205
www.sharktagger.com
sharktgr@verizon.net