Chris and I spent a few days at the Island for the Fourth and I managed to squeeze in a few hours of fishing on Saturday. We spent some time before noon up by Toyon and managed a bunch of bass but nothing of consequence. I had headed down to Avalon to get side-tied for the evening when a phone call brought about a change of plans and forced me to fish a couple of more hours.

I headed for the late afternoon seabass bite on the end of the island but found backward conditions and too much wind. Much preferring the warm sun on the front I retraced my path and relocated on some stringers that have provided some good fishing in the past. As I got closer I saw a few bigger boils on the kelp line…Oh Boy!!! My first bait was bit before I got the second one in the water and I knew right away this was a good one. The fish took off up the starboard side and for a while started to head out to sea. But that was soon to change and before long the damage was done as I watched helplessly as my line headed straight into the kelp along the beach. It’s a sickening feeling to know you’ve hooked a good one on gear too light for the task.

For a few minutes I tugged and pulled and let the spectra do its magic …and it did…almost. I did get the fish back out through most of the weeds but then it stopped again, on the edge of the main kelp. As I could see the stringer it was tangled in, I got Chris up to the bridge, had her start the engines and back us in towards the trouble. Once we pulled the belly from the chain, we had to let out some more to get back in position, right over the boulder with the ribbon kelp on it. We were in about 25’ of water and I could see the fish still tangled up but I was afraid to pull any harder so I went to plan “B”. I put my rod in a holder and got a spool of line that Pete from Precision had brought down to do some ‘rigger rigging. I tied on a Tady 4/0 and kept tossing it down to grab the kelp stringers, had to keep the line tight to the fish and instruct a new boat driver in the fine art of positioning all at the same time.

I fooled around with this scenario for about 30 minutes before I felt it was helpless and I picked up my rod for the final pull…and the fish came loose!!! I could see it was a good one the whole time, but when I was reaching with the gaff I thought “WOW!!!” and then I went to pull it in the boat and got a better sense of how lucky I really was. As we were yet to get a scale on the boat, I don’t have an exact weight. But I had just caught a 38# yellow a few weeks back and my first thought was that this one was bigger. Then I did the math…28 squared x 41.5 divided by 800= 40+ lbs. This was the fattest yellow I have ever seen and as it turned out, it was a male and very ready to spawn. I cut the fish, cleaned the boat and called Russ at Armstrong’s to see if they would do the honors…and they would. We got a table right on the water and they prepared the fish in three styles; grilled, blackened and sautéed in olive oil. The fish was fantastic and that dinner made a nice ending to a fun day. And I’ve got to get a scale on that boat!!!

Good Luck and Good Fishing–MarkW