August 10th, 2021
If you think I don't have bad days out on the water I suggest you keep reading. I couldn't find a crew so it was just me and Gina. We pushed off at 4am, grabbed some bait and headed towards Moriches Inlet. The ocean was glass on the way out. We arrived at the Dip to find it lifeless. About an hour into trolling our starboard side outrigger gets smoked. I run over and push the drag up to strike. Holy moly it didn’t slow the fish down one bit. We are down to half a spool. We are down to a quarter of a spool. I instruct Gina to circle back and I’ll bring the rod up front and run the fish down. We can’t back down on the fish because we still have two lines out. Gina begins her turn. However it wouldn’t matter, the fish was gone. I remember reading as line comes off the spool, drag pressure is increased without touching the drag lever. I should have actually backed off the drag. Not an easy thing to do when you are on your way to being spooled. The line snapped due to the increase in drag. At this point we decided to pot hop for mahi. The first pot we come to has a bunch of decent fish around it. As we start to pick off a few fish I’m noticing that not only did the wind shift but the wind really started to pick up. Along with the wind a dark cloud above seems to show up out of nowhere. Now I can’t see into the water, the wind is making it impossible to stay close to the lobster pot and it begins to rain. If you look at the photo of my screen shot you can see the only place where it is raining is directing above us. Go refill your cup of coffee because it gets crazier from here. We can’t mahi fish and there is no way to out run the wind so I decide to put the trolling gear back out and troll across the flats. 15 minutes later the wind shifts back to southwest and the sun comes out. Uggh. As the wind begins to drop out one of our Sterling daisy chains gets hit. Big fish. I run over and increase the drag and pop. No bleeping way! As I’m staring at the reel another rod goes off. I get my belt on and it’s game on. Five minutes later I take my belt off. The fish spit the hook. I wish that this was the end to our cursed day but sadly enough it’s not. I quickly re-rig the snapped line and we get the spread back out. Sure enough we get another knock down. It was on the new daisy chain that we just put out. I go to reel in the line to check the hook. However I can’t reel it in. Something is wrong. Gina comes over to inspect the reel and she noticed that when I put the line through the rollers on the rod I mistakenly threaded the line through the outside of the roller. 100% my fault. Next time I’ll have my reading glasses on. After I fixed the problem we put the lines back out one last time. This time the deep diver gets hit. It’s a decent mahi. Another rod goes off and it’s another mahi. We manage to land both fish however with the mahi going nuts in the boat the Nomad deep diver’s lip cracks in half. On this day even when we do things right something still goes wrong. We are done. We pack up and head home. On the way home we spot a few dolphin. I look at Gina and I tell her that I love her but I need to check them out. As we get closer, a few dolphin turned into several hundred. Find the dolphin and you will find the tuna. I grab a popping rod and on the first cast I come tight, we boat a small but legal yellowfin. Second cast I hook up with a much bigger fish. However the fish spits the hook. On the third cast I get blown up but I didn’t come tight. Through all of this the wind is really starting to crank. It’s becoming harder to see the dolphin because of all the white caps. It’s over. Its 5:30 and we have a two hour ride home. On the ride home I got a little wet but nothing crazy. We cruised home at 30kts. The last ten miles were as flat as they were when we headed out 13 hours earlier. As the day was happening in real time it truly felt as if we were cursed. However, once the boat was cleaned and we sat on the couch we both realized how exciting the day was. Isn’t that the reason why we love saltwater fishing? It’s the unknown that calls us back to the sea.
So we ended the trip with 5 decent mahi and a small yellowfin. I believe the first fish that we lost was a big blue marlin. A few years ago we hooked a blue marlin that didn’t start tail-walking until a half hour into the fight. I believe the second and third fish that we lost were big yellowfin.
I plan on changing out all of my topshots and checking all drags. Going forward I will check all drags before every trip
