Looking back, this was a trip of nice fish boated and lost monsters. Luck was not on our side Sunday.
Well Aaron (aarond), Justin, 1st-time guy Travis, and I left out of the Wrightsville launch at 5:45 with Capt Rick Croson. Mike of Liveline rode out with us with a group from NY. We got out to the AJ grounds to find beautiful conditions and set up the drift. Immediately we started banging fish on each drift, and they had some size to them. I hooked up to the 1st fish, and Travis soon followed with a nice 40 lb fish of his own...his first jigging. You could see the look in his eyes after, when he realized what he had gotten into when he wanted to come with us...he was in for a long day of pain haha!
shortly after, Justin hooked up to his second fish of the day. During the fight, which had justin moving up and down the boat, Aaron hooked up to a monster of his own on the Sevenseas rod. That fish was bigger than anything he had hooked in any of our trips...but the fish was lost to a nasty reel failure when it did a massive surge. However, Justin was still hooked up. After a grueling 20 min fight that kicked his butt, he boated a nice 57", 85lb AJ. Congrats bud. in the meantime, a 12ft manta ray came and checked out the boat. He hung around the boat for 10 min before disappearing. Amazing. Seriously, I need to save up for a underwater housing...
I boated a nice 70 lb fish, and Aaron followed with a 70-75 lb fish of his own. After that, we ran into a string of bad luck. Aaron tied on a Nagamasa while I fished a Nasout, and we both hook 2 freakin monsters that had us doing laps around the boat. However, we both lost our fish to freakish events...mine shook the hook a color and a half under the boat, and Aaron's mainline parted. We were hoping my fish would pop up to the surface but it never did...man it was massive, the largest jack I've ever hooked. Aaron tied on another Nagamasa and hooked up to a monster again...and again the line parted. It was just not his day for big fish...
We decided to go for some bottom fish and got 2 nice reds, but overall it was slow. In hindsight we should of just kept jigging for AJs. The weather was rough on the way in so we never had a chance to stop for topwater AJs.
All in all, it was a great day on the water even though we never could get a true monster to the boat. We got plenty of quality fish to the boat to wear us all out haha. We always enjoy fishing with Rick, and he works his ass off to put us on quality fish. See you soon brotha!
Gear used:
Stella JDM 20000SW PG
ZeeBass 25 (I'll let Aaron weigh in on this reel)
Accurate Twinspins
Synit 450
Star plasma jigging rods
Sevenseas Hiramasa (sick bend!)
Enjoy the pics
Justin with his monster
Sevenseas bent up on a monster...sick bend
Aaron and Justin on monsters
Trav's first fish
Mike on the big Dusky
