Every once in a while, there comes an opportunity or experience that you realize you must seize. You feel it in your blood, your gut, or wherever, that this is something you cannot miss...because if you do, you will be left out of something truly special.
The crew would consist of me, Aaron, Mikey, Topper, Topper's friend from Thailand, and Capt Rick. We launched Rick's beautiful 23T Onslow Bay around 5:45, and followed the boats out of OI. As soon as we cleared the inlet, Rick pushed the throttle down, channeling 450 horsies as we blew pasts the sportfishers to make the 40 mile run to the shelf where the warm waters of the gulf stream met the colder inshore waters.
We get to the shelf, where over the span of a half mile it drops from 200' to over 1000' deep. we start to motor around in search of the fish. after some fruitless searching, we decided to run a couple miles to the north. Up there, we find the main fleet and our Furuno starts lighting up. We see a boat nearby hook up on a trolled ballyhoo so we know we are in the right spot. Rick positions us for a drift and we get the signal to drop the jigs down.
We drop, and I get smacked 40 ft under the boat but no hook up. Topper gets hit too, but again cant stick the fish. I drop again, and this time I get bit hard and make sure I stick the fish good with multiple hooksets. The fish begins to run straight out and line begins to peel off the reel. However after about a 50min fight, the hooks pull when the fish is 150 ft from the boat. Heartbreak, as I know that was a monster fish of at least 250. In the meantime, Aaron dropped and had hooked up. He breaks his fish fast on his MC works 512 and has the 71" (180lb) boatside in 15 minutes. we gaff the fish and bring it aboard, and high fives all around.
We reposition, and I am bit again on the first drop. However after 5 min I feel a weird tapping and then slack. Another tuna ran into my line and cut it, causing me to lose a third spool of my daiwa boat braid. Again, heartbreak. I switch reels and get back to it.
Rick decided to move and position us well ahead of the fleet. The area we are fishing with is swarming with sharks. I was stunned to see scalloped hammers everywhere! We probably saw over 100 just cruising under the surface...however they were here to mate, and not feed. We did have a 5' mako come up to the boat, so I grabbed Aaron's RacePoint Special with a dorado slider and cast it out to try and entice the mako. The mako ignored the offering, so I was just bringing the lure in when a 250+ tuna skied on the bait 10 yds from the boat! The rod doubled over and the fight was on! The fish dove deep after about 20 mins of running on the surface and kicked my ***. I fought the fish for another 20 min straight up and down and the hooks pulled again. Now I was ******...0-3 already! This was extremely frustrating, but part of the game. At that point Aaron and Topper both grabbed their RPS and began casting, and both hooked up immediately. This is where the day began to become truly incredible.
As they started to fight their fish, Mikey and I started seeing black torpedoes cruising in the waves...these were not hammerheads....these were TUNA! What we saw was utterly indescribable, and I will probably never see anything like it again. Pods and pods of BIG tuna, all of them over 200 and many pushing 300, were surfing the waves toward our boat! And no one else was around us! Topper's friend and Mikey grabbed their casting rods and Rick and I shouted the positions of incoming pods of fish. You had to throw the stickbaits right on top of their head, and they would destroy it. Mikey and Topper's friend both hooked up to fish over 300, but one resulted in a broke mainline and the other pulled hooks. Topper and Aaron continued to fight their fish. Topper unfortunately lost his after 30 min when his and aarons lines became crossed, and aaron's lines sawed him off.
Aaron continued to fight his demon fish. The fish dove straight down from the beginning of the fight, and on the long rod, was starting to hurt aaron. After about an hour, Aaron was in visible pain and couldnt put a sentance together. We finally had color on the fish, but for anyone who knows anything about tuna...this is the hard part. Those last 50 yds of death circles will just kill you. However, in some of the most brilliant show of perserverance, strength, and guts, Aaron was able to bring the fish to the surface and we sunk the gaff. It measured 74" x 48", our giant for the boat...est around 250 lbs. Great job Aaron!
This spectacle over the next 2 hours led to multiple hooks ups and break offs due to the shear size and numbers of fish. We decided to call it quits around 4 and headed back in. Final tally was:
Me 0-3+
Mikey 0-9+
Topper 0-2+
Topper's friend 0-2
Aaron 2-2
