February 5, 2004 -Do you have the stomach? I have the boat.

[hannaman]

February 5, 2004

Do you have the stomach? I have the boat.

The weather is changing everyday, the winds have been pushing hard since Thursday. I was out of the inlet on Wednesday doing some tests on the transducer and depthfinder and we basically had no problems at speeds of 30+ knots. Come Thursday morning the winds were steady 25mph out of the east and seas were stacked 5-7 foot waiting for you when you left the inlet. Some waves were occasionally 8-10 foot with steep and deep troughs.

Nevertheless my crew of 3 men from New Jersey were eager to fish. On the first drift crew member # 1 needs to go back in. So we dropped him off and faced the inlet 1 more time. We get to our spot, put the lines out and the close Pilchard gets picked up and the rod bends over hard. Line screams off the reel like it will never stop. We see a nice Bull Dolphin jump over a 100 yards from the boat. We had to chase him down to get him close to the boat. The seas made it seem like we had a 50 pounder. Finally sunk the gaff and pulled up a 25 pound fish. Now crew # 2 needs to go back to the docks. We drop him off and faced the inlet once again for the 3rd time, (getting old) this was a paid 6 hour trip, work is work. We set up one more time and we drifted over the 150 depths when the deep rod goes off harder than the first time, straight to the bottom this time. We stayed on this fish for 30 minutes and couldn't get any line back. I tried changing angles on the fish with the boat and finally pulled the hooks. When I looked at the stinger rig my trebles were straightened and my lead 5/0 eagle claw was straightened. I'm amazed at what happens when fish go deep and my reel had only 4-5 pounds of drag. He did have a lot of line out, about half the spool on this Shimano TLD 25 so the drag pressure was probably up there. 5 minutes later one of other charter boats landed a 12 foot Thresher Shark not to far away from us. It's nice to know we had that possibility. Threshers usually show up a bit later in the season. I think I'm getting a few rods ready to start looking for them.

Thresher Sharks are amazing looking with their extra long tail and big eyes. Their meat is comparable to a Swordfish. I'm getting goose bumps just talking about it. Come and get in the action and reserve a day in the offshore hunting grounds.


Till Next Tide,
Captain Cary Hanna