. . . again off the East side of the Vineyard. It was late afternoon and the tide was on its way up. We were using Yo-Zuri's and had just switched to the floaters after trolling with the deep-runners for over an hour with not a single knockdown. We had just mentioned how we hadn't gotten a single fish, my buddy even said " . . . nary a nibble . . . " when the Penn 6500SS, 16 lb test, 7 foot medium action rod, went off. As my buddy was reeling/fighting, I set to reel the second rod in when I got a take. He got his fish in, I helped him net the bonito which to us takes precedence over any fish, then I got back to fighting the fish on the rod I had put in the rodholder to help net, it took a while to fight the fish in and I wasn't sure it was a bluefish since it didn't run or fight like one, much to my surprise, when the fish got close to the boat, it turned out to be a big black sea bass! It was 7 or 8 lbs and it fought harder than the bonito we had been catching or even any of the bluefish we had caught. Not to mention I had never caught a black sea bass trolling before, then again, earlier in the day while trolling off Menemsha, we caught a sea robin while trolling for bones too, so there is very little that is surprising me nowadays. As you can see in the pic, the seabass is a little bigger than the bonito. The other thing is you can see the rip in the background and how I wear the orange horseshoe PFD around my waist so if I ever fall in, at least I have floatation on my hip, and at the very worst, they will be able to recover the body, ha, ha, ha.
Threaded Mode