Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Joe vs Asplundh

Day two of the Club Limited trip started off with a bit of unusual weather. To my surprise it was raining offshore. I rarely see rain offshore this time of year. Nonetheless, we dropped the teasers in the water at about 35 miles out in 3700 feet of water. I was on the 35 with Nat and Lance. We raised a few early but had difficult bites out of them. The fish were billing the fly rather than crashing it. Lance finally got a huge bite out of a sail that got him into the backing immediately. Lance has picked up this fly fishing thing pretty quickly and got the sail to the boat in just a few minutes.
Lance's sailfish takes to the air.


Nat was up next and didn't have to wait long for a fish to be raised. While Nat prepared himself for the cast, Johan teased the fish into casting range. The call "cast the fly" came and Nat slapped the fly down beside the teaser. Johan yanked the teaser out, the fish ate the fly going left to right and Nat gave a hard left sided hook set. Somehow, and I'm not sure how, the fly came right out of the fishes mouth. Go figure.

I'm up and it's quite raining. Nice! Then it starts again. Bad! A hungry sail shows up, eats the fly and after a short fight is released at boatside.

Lance catches another one. But this time with a little more style. Before the fish is raised Lance lights a stogie. The fish shows up on the left short teaser and Lance casually walks to the transom, tosses his fly in the water, casts the fly and hooks the fish. Simple, except that it was raining and a bit choppy. Lance caught the fish in about 7 minutes and throughout it all he never lost the fire in his stogie!

Nat's back at it again. After some discussion between us about hook setting strategies Nat gets a shot at a hot fish. I am not lying when I say that Nat set the hook with a wild look in his eye and makes quick work of the sailfish. Our mate Rudy announces that the fish has a very short bill. At boatside I lean over to stick a tag in the fish and see that Nat has sunk both hooks to the hilt. Now that's a tournament style hook set if I ever saw one. Pretty work Nat. And by the way we have this fly fishing tournament coming up next year if you're interested...

We ended the day with 4 sailfish released on the FRENZY II, two of which I tagged with Billfish Foundation tags which I am hoping will get reported back to us when the fish are re-captured.

On the 43' FRENZY they had a big day catching 6 on fly. Lee apparently caught two back to back in a total elapsed time of no more than 6 minutes. He mentioned something about the other guys not wanting to get out in the rain.

A beautiful sail shows its colors at the boat.
When they got back to the house all I heard about was some story about Joe that involved him running to the stern of the boat, pitching the fly in the water and putting the hooks to a feisty sailfish in short order. Then something about him and some guy named Asplundh building a sportfishing boat together. Hey Lee what's up with that...?

One more day at it as the Frenzy continues...

Jamie

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