Another fine day on the Phyllis Ann and another great job by captain and crew!
It was a long but fun day on the water. We found life and, after the last trip when we found life and left it for, what we thought were greener pastures, we knew we had to stick it out and hope they would turn on the feed bag.
We marked fish and bait. We jigged and trolled. For the longest time we couldn't buy a bite. Finally, after a lot of hard work we got bit, and this one was going on the deck.
I don't think the entire fight was 15 minutes. I think it was less than 10. But, when you have a tuna on the line, all sense of time goes out the window.
It seemed like everything was going well. Rod maneuvered expertly to avoid the fish going under the boat, the fish was tired and coming up nicely in it's clockwise death spiral, and then SNAP!
My immediate thought was that the fish would be gone, but when I saw it was still attached, I knew we were going to land it. I started cranking on the reel and my (now) 3 foot jigging stick while Kenny grabbed his gloves. Kenny was just as determined to bloody the deck with this fish. Paulie had the camera and captured the dramatic scene.
Kenny grabbed the line and hand-lined the fish up the last 20 or 30 feet as I cranked in the slack and Rod stood by with the gaff. A couple more feet and WHACK! Rod stuck it perfectly! Kenny quickly grabbed the other gaff and together they hoisted a beautiful 80 pounder over the gunwale.
High fives all around! Tuna in the boat!
It was awesome!
Of course the main reason we go out is to catch tuna, but, to me, just being out there with all that life in the blue water is thrilling to me. On this trip we were treated to sights of large turtles, a huge shark eyeing up our trolling spread and acres of dolphins treating us to an amazing show and playing in our bow wake.
Here's some footage I shot of that. Hopefully, when I get better with this YouTube editing, I'll put some more video together and add music. For now, here's some of the raw footage.
[youtube=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9kRzRORprc[/youtube]
Great fishing with my friends Kenny and Paulie. And proud to be a part of one of their excellent adventures!
Thanks Rod for another terrific day of tuna fishing on the Phyllis Ann!
