THE BEAST

24 Feb 2010

This will go down as the day I caught my first GTMO lunker. What's crazy is that I almost didn't even go. Sam was leaving Saturday and we had been talking about fishin since I came here. I was put on a maintenance detail on the other side of the island that was supposed to last 7 hrs. We started at 0830 and was headed back by 1030. You know what that means (Fishin time!) Just by chance I bumped into him at the ferry and it was on. We gave the fisherman’s shake and planned it out. We stayed on the water about three hours. The wind picked up a little so it was slightly choppy. He was catchin a couple of Lane Snappers intermittently but none of em were keeper size. I sat out there for 2.5 hrs with not so much as a nibble. I always say go big or go home so I had 5/0 circle hooks with a 100 lb wire leader 50 lb trilene line and all heavy duty snaps and swivels with a 2oz egg sinker. Basically a big-time Carolina bottom Rig. He caught one more of the lil ones and I was like "man give me that lil fish, he bout to be bait". I snipped his tail off and slid the hook in. Nothing brings the big boys in like fresh blood. I tossed it out on my big levelwind rod and let it sit. In the meantime I worked various spoons and jigs on my light action spinning rod. While I soak my bait I always work on my topwater skills. It's not like fishing is 100% action. Gotta pass the time some kinda way. We had about 20 mins to bring the boat back without a penalty fee. I had just said "lets pull the anchor and head back". No sooner than the words came out of my mouth the drag on my big rod started hollerin. I grabbed it and the fight was on. I thought I had a shark the way the line was peeling out even with the drag set high. I knew it had to be a monster. I loosened the drag because I thought the line might snap. He takes off like a torpedo again stripping about another 40 yards from my reel. It takes a bad ass fish to bend my power stick rod, but that rod doubled over like I caught a Volkswagen! I told Sam “shit I might run out of line!” My reel looked like it had about 50 yds of line left so I had to play hard ball. I started taking up line about 1 foot at a time. I had to slow him down so I set the drag a little tighter and tipped the rod to get him up out the deep. The longer he stayed down there the greater chance he had of entanglement. It took me about 25 minutes of yoyo wrestling with that fish to tire him out. He got up to the boat and we proclaimed in unison "shit, no net!" One look at that mouth armament and we decided lipping him wasn’t a good idea. So Sam reached out and grabbed him by the gills with a towel wrapped around his hand. Sam wrestled him in the boat and that fish was mad as hell. I thought he was tired but he got his second wind when we pulled him out the water. He flopped so hard I could swear it looked like a midget doin jumping jacks. It took another 10 mins to get him in the livewell. We got him to the Marina and we got big fish honors of the day. A little Filipino guy told us he’d fillet it for us if he could keep the head (said it makes a damn good soup). That sounded fine to me. Now all I have to do is figure out how to fry this fish when my only cooking utensils consist of a spoon and two plastic bowls…