Quote:
Originally Posted by Nebe
while i do not question you, i do question how you are saying they were definate 50's and a 60.. how can you be sure if you never had them on the rocks?
I have had fish on that i thougth were in the high 40's that ended up to be 15 lb blue fish. I had a 50 lb bass on the line once that ended up to be a bath mat  |
Good question, Nebe!
I am referring to the last two and 1/2 seasons that i spent in the NE surf, from when I first began until last year when i did get to within a foot or so of the biggest striper i've ever hooked and did see her from head to dorsal/from dorsal to 4th stripe ~head on view/from swish of tail to head and gone to snap my shock leader and be gone, She was massive. i was using big eeeels, right tide and time, and would put her at 60#+.
Same spot previous year, '06, and in the middle of a new moon bite landing 20's to 30's with schoolies, came a lunge in and back under take and hunker down while chunking a pogie head. She did not move, and I did not know how to move her then, or to wait her out, and she shook her shoulders a little bit then opened her big maw and spit my noobily "set" hook having stolen her morsel.
Same spot same year, '06, chunking again big head chunks about a month later. only fiftty or so yards away on the covered side of a huge boulder, new moon the second biggest take and hunker i've ever had in those NSore waters. She took it, shook it, I set up, she hunkered down beneath said boulder, then she began to rub away at the leader....................I kept pressure, that is until my worn leader gave way and i got back the last foot before my spool line started.
The other spot was MBLHD HBR, fall '06, do you remember me asking about using culls for bait or not? Just so happens i caught one chunking macks one nite at the harbour. so i chunked up the tail for chum, thru out the claws for more chum, and saved the head for something hopefully "good" on yer typical chunking set-up. I took a chance, I mean i HAD read "On the Run"
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Within two-three minutes the biggest and most powerful KAWHAM/take i have yet to experience inhaled that head and swam about three feet and hunkered down to an immovable position. the place where i was is loaded with boulders, but it wouldn't have mattered as i hooked the head with supreme googanity and she coughed my offering up once she was aware of the hook. I had rigged the hook in a way that it never would have stuck in her maw.
The only reason I guesstimate the above sizes to be that big, and these are all guesses since I landed neither of them, is i compare them to the monstah i did see this year, and to the several over 30's that i did land this year. the 43''er that i C&R in Sept was dwarfed by the ??60?? that got away that night in the same honey cove about a month earlier. Seriously, they looked like rats compared to the size of this cow. i've also landed bull reds and trophy tarpon in FL and those tugs on body and drag, you never forget!
I have no reason to exagerrate, Nebe, as this place produces BIG fish, often. While our minds in the surf can play incredible tricks, this BIG BEETCH is indelibly etched into my cereberal cortex and will be until i land her twin or her Momma this coming season. And I do know where, when, what, and why she's gonna be there. I just have to remember to let her swim a bit instead of trying to horse her in like some 25#'er. That was my biggest goog with her, i brought her in waaaay, way too green, like me during that fight
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Anyways, yer prolly right and i could be way off, but that's what they felt like then and i tend to remember the ones I didn't land moreso than the ones that i bested, because the "ones that got away" have taught me the most
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