Tales of fishing. Likely mostly lies, but always entertaining.
Fishing Stories
- Thread starter Chad Adams
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Sheep-Head — the bridge-dwelling recidivist of the sea.
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Smelling the Bite | Field Ethos
By Roger Pinckney Sheep-head. Find you a dock or a bridge, easy enough on the Carolina Coast. Bust off…
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Here is a fish that I'm proud of, mostly because my two buddies that were with me were so useless that I basically caught it on my own.
We pulled up behind a dragger just as he was finishing hauling back his net. There were only a handful of other boats there, so I was able to easily pull in tight to the back of the dragger. I ran from the lower helm, threw a handful of cut butterfish over the side, grabbed the live bluefish I had bridled to a hook from the live well, ran up to the bow where I already had the rod positioned into one of the forward rod holders, and gently pitched the live bait out into the water. I put the 130 reel into free spool and slowly paid out line until i figured I had fifty to seventy five feet out. I locked the drag up to about fourty pounds and ran back to the lower helm so I could manuever the boat and not end up with our bow on the the transom of the dragger. Before I could make it to the controls, we got bit. I screamed out that we were tight and ran as fast as I could back up to the rod so I could crank down on the fish and make sure we had a good hook set. I yelled to one of my buddies to run Up to the bow and to take over the rod from me so I could run back to the controls and back the boat down away from the dragger to try and pull the fish away so as not to foul up in there gear. For some retarded reason, the first thing my buddy did when he got on the rod was to the crank the reels drag all the way up to park, which is sixty some odd pounds of drag. Thank god I was fishing heavy leader and my connections were all crimped right. Even with that much drag, the fish was peeling line off like it was nothing. I ran to the helm and went hard on the throttles and started backing down as fast as I could. There was a smaller boat behind me with what I could tell was not experienced anglers on board, I started screaming and waving at them to get out of the way but they just kind of stood there in a stuper watching me. I made the decision in my head that I was not going to slow down and If i had to run into them i would, i did not want to lose this fish! At the last second, they throttled forward and out of the way. Miraculously the fish did not run into the draggers gear, but instead ran out to the west tight to the surface. Though it missed breaking off on the dragger, it ran straight towards another boat, a small center console, a couple of hundreds yards off our beam. I watched the line go straight towards the boats motors, and I was for sure we were about to break off, I screamed and waved my arms, and luckily the other anglers had the wherewithal to hammer down and get out of the way. We narrowly missed cutting our line off on his props. I was now finally able to throttle down and chase after the fish and gain some of our line back. Everyone took turns on the rod, and after about five hours the fish came up basically dead. It measured in at almost 115 inches with a weight in the 900 pound class, the biggest Bluefin we had yet to put on the deck of our boat. One thousand pounds is a magic number, a true grander, so the allure of killing one that big is still in me….
We pulled up behind a dragger just as he was finishing hauling back his net. There were only a handful of other boats there, so I was able to easily pull in tight to the back of the dragger. I ran from the lower helm, threw a handful of cut butterfish over the side, grabbed the live bluefish I had bridled to a hook from the live well, ran up to the bow where I already had the rod positioned into one of the forward rod holders, and gently pitched the live bait out into the water. I put the 130 reel into free spool and slowly paid out line until i figured I had fifty to seventy five feet out. I locked the drag up to about fourty pounds and ran back to the lower helm so I could manuever the boat and not end up with our bow on the the transom of the dragger. Before I could make it to the controls, we got bit. I screamed out that we were tight and ran as fast as I could back up to the rod so I could crank down on the fish and make sure we had a good hook set. I yelled to one of my buddies to run Up to the bow and to take over the rod from me so I could run back to the controls and back the boat down away from the dragger to try and pull the fish away so as not to foul up in there gear. For some retarded reason, the first thing my buddy did when he got on the rod was to the crank the reels drag all the way up to park, which is sixty some odd pounds of drag. Thank god I was fishing heavy leader and my connections were all crimped right. Even with that much drag, the fish was peeling line off like it was nothing. I ran to the helm and went hard on the throttles and started backing down as fast as I could. There was a smaller boat behind me with what I could tell was not experienced anglers on board, I started screaming and waving at them to get out of the way but they just kind of stood there in a stuper watching me. I made the decision in my head that I was not going to slow down and If i had to run into them i would, i did not want to lose this fish! At the last second, they throttled forward and out of the way. Miraculously the fish did not run into the draggers gear, but instead ran out to the west tight to the surface. Though it missed breaking off on the dragger, it ran straight towards another boat, a small center console, a couple of hundreds yards off our beam. I watched the line go straight towards the boats motors, and I was for sure we were about to break off, I screamed and waved my arms, and luckily the other anglers had the wherewithal to hammer down and get out of the way. We narrowly missed cutting our line off on his props. I was now finally able to throttle down and chase after the fish and gain some of our line back. Everyone took turns on the rod, and after about five hours the fish came up basically dead. It measured in at almost 115 inches with a weight in the 900 pound class, the biggest Bluefin we had yet to put on the deck of our boat. One thousand pounds is a magic number, a true grander, so the allure of killing one that big is still in me….
