One Bite, One Fish - PB Yellow (7/26)

[Latimeria]

My plan was to get out on the water Saturday to unwind from my usual hell week. The girls wanted do a family movie day which messed up my plans since I wanted to get to Kevin's Party later that day and now something had to give...  I decided to just fish Sunday instead.

We saw The Odessey in IMAXX and I really liked it!  It was a different rendition of what I remember reading, but the acting was really well done and I thought it was a good call to see it in the movie theatre!

We got back and I headed to Kevin's to meet up with some buddy's I haven't seen in a bit.  Long story short and we were doing shots off shot glasses that were epoxied to a snow ski... 

Thankfully home wasn't far away!  lol

Next morning and it was a struggle to motivate, but I did.

I was launching when Jeremy's future boat was being dropped in.



The water was crazy warm heading out the inlet.



I found the fleet of 100 boats all piled up in the same area.  I tried fishing it, but was over that quickly.  I also couldn't find the fresh squid I brought with me (I swore I packed it) so now I had to just wing it with lures.



I went inside to stay away from everyone else!



I didn't see much in the way of bait but there was plenty of dolphin around.



I was ready to call it since I didn't even get as much as a sniff all morning.  Then it sounded like a dolphin breach next to the boat but when I looked, I didn't see any others so I grabbed the new jig stick and cast out the good old Tady 45 (with a mackerel skin wrap).  5 cranks in and PLOOOOOOOSH!!!!!! I almost thought I snagged a dolphin and could tell this thing was a giant.

I lost track of time, but it was probably around 15-20 minutes under some tight drag.  I saw it and was like WTF?!?!

I got the gaff sunk and was exhausted.  My shoulder was shot and I was having a hard time holding it up but what a slug!  It looked like an oarfish!!!  It had a weird scoliosis going on with a deformed back end but was over 50" forklength from what I could gather from my boat tape that was too small.



I knew it was my PB, but guessing it was closer to 50# than 40#.  I took a few pics but my shoulder was having real troubles.  The head on this thing had a bigger head than me!

I left it packed in ice overnight since it was too late to clean and I really wanted to firm up the meat.  I also figured that I could get some really accurate measurements.

After a quick measurement, I had 51.2" fork length and the scale tells the tale.  I had super high hopes it would be 50#, but pretty close. 48.34#


https://imgur.com/azH7QN4

It was a female filled with eggs but a mostly empty belly.  Filleting it was difficult because of something wrong with the spine as seen here.





In any case, my PB and what a fish!  The meat was a little on the tough side and what a weird backbone! 

Anyway, One bite and One fish.  I'm glad I never found the squid or I wouldn't have caught this beauty!

Thanks for reading and until the next trip!

[jrodda]

Awesome (and very unique) fish Tom! Congrats on a PB yellow. I wonder how long it lived with that scoliosis, if it was an old age condition or it managed its whole life with it. 20 minute fight tells me it never slowed it down.

Speaking of The Odyssey, that livvie is my siren's song. Just gotta resist a bit longer...