60 second battle with 400 to 500 # seal

[Swimmer]

My brother and I Squid Kids Dad were driving the beach in Edgartown two to three miles south of the filled in great pond opening when we decided to stop and fish. Mike threw some tin into the surf and I used my new 13' meat stick. I cut up some bunker and put it on a # 8 gami octopus circle hook. Aproximately ten minutes later the rod bent over and the Shimano Calcutta drag clicker starts making noise like you dream about. I grabbed the rod and it was bending over threatening to destroy the new rod I had wanted to make for years and finally did. The power pro 65 # test line was flying off the reel. Mike was about 100 feet away and could hear the line stripping, and his hearing sucks. I figured I had a world record striped bass on, or I had hooked into a striped bass that a seal had also decided to eat, or I had hooked into one of the 400 to 500 pound seals that were just off the beach. After about 40 to 50 seconds and several huge/strong head shakes, several drag adjustments, this seal comes up about 500 feet out from the beach. My braid extended from the tip of my rod right to this seals mouth completely out of the water except for a few feet just before where the seal surfaced and stopped pulling. I cranked down on the drag, because I didn't want to lose all this line. But in retrospect it was up to the seal at this point. Another few seconds and what I thought was line separation had occured or some other failure such as my knots coming apart happened. When I reeled everything back in I found that the gami hook broke right where the back of the hook starts its curve into the shank. Snapped right off. All my knots worked just fine. I couldn't believe how powerful the head shakes were trying to jettison the hook. Sitting here after the fact writing about this I don't suppose thier was anything I could do to have beached the seal. And if I did I think I would have had huge problems, legal and otherwise. As it is there is a one in piece of Gami hook stuck in the seals jaw.