I have been fishing from my kayak pretty tenaciously since our 'season' supposedly began in early April. There are some websites from the Okinawan mainland where I can check reports and see that people are in fact catching GTs while I am not. For some reason my luck has been terrible this year.
Anyway, it all turned around Sunday morning an hour past dawn. I was an hour into an outgoing tide, fishing off a point with very little wind and finally had a big GT strike. I was so out of practice that I didn't even know what was going on when there was a sudden commotion around my lure. Fortunately he hooked himself up before I could make a mistake. Not knowing how my kayak would respond, I acted prudently at first. I just kept my rod tip over the bow and gradually tightened the drag as I became more confident. It didn't take too long before I was right over top the GT, which I think was advantageous for preventing a break-off. A couple minutes into the fight, I think he probably reached bottom because I could pull him up a meter or so and he would immediately take the line back but go no further. About 5-6 minutes in I was able to lift him off the bottom and keep bringing him up. The fight only lasted a total of about seven minutes and I was surprised how quickly I was able to make things happen from the kayak. I put what I thought was a lot of pressure on him and my 65lb. Powerpro line (I have no idea how many kgs of pressure I had, but I couldn't pull any line out by hand when it was all over).
He was about 20kg and I wasn't going to take pictures in the kayak with him aboard. I have a fancy, expensive camera (I didn't even bring it) and am thinking of getting a pocket, waterproof camera for instances just like this.
Caught on a Carpenter Sea Frog, Carpenter SP78H, and Stella 8000.
