Epic Proportions

I'm waiting to see what the weather is going to do down here today, so here's yesterday's story:

Dropped in at Stage for the last three hours of incoming in hope of some bluefish. Tough NE breeze. Lots of birds working the mouth, Hardings, and the edge of Common Flat. Spent too much time investigating Hardings and Red River beach as we only found scattered schoolies there and nothing over on Common Flat. Moved to the inside of South Beach/the Bowl and the stripers began to show toward the end of the flood tide. Some nice pods of fish on the flats -- mostly schoolies to 25" with a few larger fish and some blues mixed in. We did pretty well, although visibility for sight fishing was marginal at times. My father outfished me with sluggos 4-to-1.

By 2:30 we were freezing and the fish were getting scarce. We made one last move onto the flat up inside the Bowl. Spotted a large single moving right along the beach and made a long, skeptical cast to a spot where we hoped the fish might eventually find itself. Before I settled into a good retrieve the fish was on and the water literally exploded.

The fish made one long run up the flat and into the bowl. She was too far out to do much with her, so we ended up chasing her for 10-15 minutes in the boat. Finally moved off the flat and into the channel where we spent another tension filled 10 minutes trying to get her up. We had no idea how large she was until she was at the boat. My father gets all the credit for getting her in the boat -- that's the only time I was really nervous.

I needed both hands to grab her tail.

Hope to have the photos back from the lab today, although I can't scan them until I'm back at work Tueday.

If this weather holds, I'll be out this afternoon.