Fish On!
05 March 2014 | San Blas Panama
Randy
I was working on building a counter in the galley at 1630 when I heard a noise which I thought was static on the radio but then realized was the fishing reel drag on the rod I had off the stern of the boat. A fish was taking line at a tremendous rate. My friend Monty was by earlier and I had showed him the filleted fish skeleton which was on a large hook. He suggested for me to tie in the rod as a barracuda could shake it out of the holder so I did although I never have done so before. When the fish took the bait and dragged me right around the boat I had a hard time keeping up not tangling in the anchor chain while untying the knot in the cord holding the rod to the back rail and the line peeling off the reel with the drag screaming. By the time I fought my way back to the cockpit on the other side of the boat I knew the fish was realy big and needed help. I jammed the rod into the stairs of the entrance hatch, dashed down and called out on radio hailing channel 72 "Monty I got a big one, come on over!" dashed back up and was still fighting hard when I saw him dingy over from across the anchorage. When he saw the fight, mostly like a big fish bending my ocean rod taking line when it wanted, he thought it was a shark I had caught, not a big fish. An HOUR after I first caught it, with the ocean rod bent over the whole time and my arms starting to shake but not getting the fish any closer to the boat we climbed in his dingy and chased it. I managed to get it up to about ten feet of the surface directly under the dingy and we saw it was a shark just about as long as the inflatable dingy we were in! The one hundred pound test leader line was onto the reel so I cranked hard and the clasp on the hook stretched out straight and the shark took off. Thank god it was about an eight hundred pound nurse shark that it didn't attack us and not an aggressive reef shark . That's my "biggest fish that got away story".