Dispite falling flat on his face,Saltheart with a broken reelseat managed to land a 39 1/16 porker last night. Way to go buddy. I hope your not in any pain this morning. That was one nasty digger.

OUCH !! I hope your Ok Mike . 39# nice fish ! Im glad you were able to land it after a tumble and a broken reel seat . It goes to show you how much we will over come to catch a big fish ! Man we got pummled last night but no tornados . Im heading to the canal in a few hours for a try myself .
what did you catch Smokey ?

That was a nice fish Saltheart, the mouth was a little hurtin' but Nice.

ChrisL check ya PMs

nobuddy home for me last night. I better clear this up now, Saltheart took the digger on the road before we started fishin.

who was that Nut with the glass rod and boat reel:D

You think he was nuts, what about the three guys holding the lighting rods.

:D :happy: :D

must have been the new shoes ! or his inner ear went on the fritz ! ;):D :D
I just hope hes Ok pavement hurts !

Grats... Pics?

3 mile walk:happy: :p

Good going MIKE,, youv,e earned it !!!!!!!!!!!!!






;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)

very nice but wheres the pics:D :happy: :D

Cool that's a great fish, but what's the rest of the fish story? Were you fishing a skin, jig? Canal fish I assume?

Good Deal , the fish I mean. Saltheart I hope you're doing OK.

Chris, to clear things up I believe it was inches not lbs. still a good ditch fish.

im going blind ! its not my fault ! ;)
39 inches is good . But I liked it in poundage better has a nice ring to it .

Yes . it was 39 plus inches.

I walked out from the parking lot and walked along and across the bike path. I was all excited about our first Ditch trip this year. I was looking at the current and figuring the wind into castinga nd well......I walked clear across the path and fell off the other side. Luckily , I didn't fall down the riprapp.


I'm fine. Like it never even happened which is a miracle cause I went down with a BAM! :) Landed on the reel which is also fine but the reel seat busted.

I fought the fish with my hand on top of the reel keeping it down on the rod and cranked on downwaord swoops of the rod til it came in. It was a rugged fish and made two good runs. It was nice and fat.

As Slip said , it had been previously injured in the mouth like 3 years ago or something . It was all healed up but sort of creepy looking.

We have a picture but it has to be developed. I was convinced it was bigger while I was fighting it but I guess it was the current (full tilt) and reel coming out of the seat that made it seem difficult to land.

Hey Saltheart, way to go!!!!!! Nice Bass, hope you didn't get hurt, sorry to hear about that rod, but it sounds like it worked pretty good.

By the way, I know how you feel, I broke my custom 9' Smitty rod during tri-state this past weekend on a bluefish. Not good, was my favorite rod.

ouch:(

yeh, ouch is right - that was one sweet stick...

Ya I was pretty sick, couldn't believe it, it brok in 2 places, not repairable, will have to have a new one built, but won't get it back for this season. Not a happy camper.

The rod itself is fine. I need a reel seat and the SiC tip is cracked which is an easy fix. I'm just going to patch and wind the seat for this season. It'll be fine til I can redo it next winter.

I love the rod (XRA1205). Casts 3 OZ really well but still not pushing it at all. I think it will peak out at 4 OZ. I only got the one hit all night but the rod was casting fine and once the tide went down and I could stand in the gravel I was really cranking it.

It worked well fighting the fish too. As I said , the fish took a lot of line on two runs and the rod just stiffened right up when it got bent fully. I'm happy with it.

ouch Jules thats got to hurt !
Mike your Ok thats good !

Nice job Mike!!!