Since you asked for "bites" Mike and not fish I thought I'd post a little story I posted on SOL back in the summer. The event took place on 8/30/01 at Indian River Inlet, DE, my homewater. My apologies to those who have already seen it but it's appropriate for this thread and a fair read for a dreary winter's day, if I do say so myself.
This morning was already going kind of rough. One of my prize Habs Needles was cast off when I didn’t realize my teaser was hung on a guide. I was down to number five in a six-pack of freshly rigged eels. And I had just spent fifteen minutes of a precious three hours fishing time untangling a fuzzball. Dawn was coming fast, I had one fish, not a bad one, about 11 pounds, but still just one fish and it seemed I had spent more time fiddling than fishing. “Man, I’m really not ‘in the zone’ tonight," had been my mantra for the entire tide.
I was flipping a “Delmarva riggie”, an eel simply cinched to a jig head, quartering it uptide and swimming it down. The casts were short and the retrieve was just fast enough to keep the eel out of the rocks. “Doodling”, I call it. It’s very effective this time of year, either with a plastic eel or especially, the real thing.
The rod I was using was one the fine Mr. Klein had lent me to test in my quest for the perfect jetty/light plug rod. The rod is unique, it is a Lami GLB1081MH fabric pattern which was wrapped on a GLB1081M mandrel. It has plenty of oomph for a stick capable of throwing light plugs, three ounces doesn’t make it groan. It correlates power wise with the Loomis 108-20, except being a Lami it has that typical, nice progressive taper so important in keeping small hooks in big fish when using braid. I had already used the rod to whup up on numerous fish from fifteen to twenty three pounds. Each time the fish was beat in short order and the rod was never close to “bottoming out”.
So, it’s getting on towards light and I’m on my fifth eel when halfway through the retrieve the eel comes to a dead stop. No bump, or rattle, not even a tic, just a dead stop. Thinking I was about to go to eel number six I popped the rod a few times to dislodge the hook from the jetty face. Still hung, I tried a steady pull. Something felt kind of spongy, very unrocklike. “Stinking fishing line,” I muttered, believing I had hung a ball of tangled line. Hoping it was mono and I could break it off, I dropped the rod tip and pulled straight on the line. That’s when things started happening.
Boy did they start happening. Straight out into the inlet runs what by now is obviously a very alive and very large rock of a different stripe. A good strong run, more than that, an awesome run. Suddenly I get that peculiar elation/dread feeling you only get when you know you have a very big fish on. Down and out, down and out the fish goes, yeehah!
Just about the time I started thinking it was time for this old gal to stop and for me to get her up she turns with the incoming tide and hits second gear. “Now wait a minute, baby,” I think/say to the fish as a I haul back on the rod and lock it up, “not so fast.” As I mentioned twenty pound fish haven’t even come close to bottoming out this rod and now I’ve got the thing bent to the butt, locked up tighter than a bung. The fish’s response? She stuck it in third and kept right on git’nit! “Better chase her,” I think.
I take off at a fast walk keeping the rod bent to the hilt. Despite giving chase, by the time I reach second break (maybe 50 yards to you non-IRI guys) the fish has peeled off another fifty or so yards of line. Shortly past second break the fish stops for the first time. Feeling her headshakes I could tell for the first time she was no ray but indeed a finfish, most likely a rock. “Okay, let's see if I can bring her up, maybe even turn her,” I think. Bring her up?! I couldn’t budge her. For the first time I put my hand on the spool. “Let’s lock this drag up for just a little and put the boots to her, see what happens,” I think, putting all the strain on the line I dared. Her response was to run it up to fourth gear and split. “Better run after her,” I think. Off at a trot I go, trying to keep the rod maxed out and the line from disappearing from my reel. The rod part went pretty well, the line part not so good.
About the time I get to first break (thirty more yards to you non-IRI guys) she gets to the hole on the east side of the bridge. “Okay,” I think, “ she’s got 90 foot of water to swim in now, I’m in pretty good shape.” Her response was to set her tabs to “dive” slide into overdrive and keep right on git’nit!
I’ve never seen a rockfish take drag so fast! And this after already stripping off close to a hundred yards of line and dragging me with a locked up, bent to the hilt, powerful fishing rod eighty yards down the jetty. My elation/dread was fast becoming dread/elation. Another honest one hundred yards disappears from the spool. I burn my thumb feathering in as much additional drag as I dare. By the time I hit the sidewalk (twenty more yards to you non-IRI guys) I am running. By now I have maybe forty or fifty yards max left on the spool.
After the sprint into the deep hole the fish begins to tire. She begins to make short, drag taking spurts followed by a lot of dogging and head shaking. I begin to lift her for the first time. I can feel her planing toward the surface. I am still unable to turn her. Each little run takes her closer to the bridge. I try desperately to stop her. Just as the battle starts going to my side she winds up on the south side of the piling, I am on the north. “Pop” and it’s over. I am exhausted. I am heartbroken.
I have a handful of thirties from the inlet, quite a number in the twenties. I’ve lost many that I believed to be bigger. None have come anywhere close to showing the power that this fish showed. It was awesome. As usual, one can only wonder. My fifty? A new state record? Who can say? It is rather immaterial, for yet she swims.
Some say, “better to love and lost than to never have loved at all.” Right now I say, “horse hocky on all that!” “I had the fish of a lifetime on, fought her extremely well and got woofed by a bridge piling!” “If that bridge had not been there I would have had her beat by the pole bend and I could have landed her in the nice quiet water of the back eddy.” The IRI is a mean old mistress. She charges hard for her affections. Right now I’d give her up in a minute for a nice long stretch of clean, soft sand. Trouble is no stretch of sand around here offers quite the kind of affections she offers. I still love her.
Plug