 Big Hog Caught By A Little Guy With A Fly
Posted by dan-l on December 31, 2004
(2305 reads)
It was August 2003, I had been telling my 9 year old nephew I would take him
striper fishing, but the days never seemed to work out. Finally I was able
to twist my sisters arm and get him out in my boat. Now, up to this point he
had never been saltwater fishing, so he had no idea what to expect, other
than me telling him I had been catching stripers longer than him. We got to
the boat launch early, and got the boat right in.
Within 15 minutes we were both fighting schoolie stripers on spinning
outfits, one after another. We stayed there for almost and hour, I couldn’t
bring myself to leave seeing he was having the time of his
life, but the
tide was perfect, and we needed to get to one of my spots where we can
usually bring a monster to the boat. I set up my fly rod while he continued
to catch the small stuff. With everything ready to go, I asked him if he was
ready to try and catch a striper as tall as him, and with a big smile on his
face, he said “You better believe it, I already caught more fish than you
today”…Hmmm, he was right, and I was happy. We took the 30minute boat ride
and I marked fish right away. He was throwing a 10inch power eel with ½ oz.
Jig head, and I started throwing the fly, we fished almost an hour without a
hit. Which was quite disappointing, because we could see the fish swimming
in front of us. I had thrown just about every fly I had in my box and my
nephew started asking if we could go back to the first spot and catch more
fish.
I looked in my other fly box and realized I had 2 flies that my nephew
bought me for my birthday back in April, but I had never thrown them. So I
tell him we will head back to the first spot after I try out the 2 flies he
gave me. On the first cast I get a strike, and we see a large boil in the
water, it was a good one. My nephew jumps up and grabs his spinning rod, but
doesn’t cast, he waits a minute and asks if I would cast my fly out for him
and he could retrieve it, How do you say no to that, I let out a pretty good
cast and hand him the rod, he had watched me for over an hour cast and
retrieve, and I was amazed at what I saw, my nine year old nephew stripping
line like a pro, then WHAMMMM, a big fish takes the fly and starts a very
fast run with the current, to this day I don’t know how the line didn’t
tangle seeing it was all in the bottom of my boat but it didn’t. With all
the fly line out, and the backing going out, I about had a heart attack.
My nephew screaming for me to take the rod back because he couldn’t do it, I
started coaching him, changed the drag a bit, got him settled, and he pumped
that fish for at least 25 minutes. When the battle was over my nephew caught
a 47inch striper on a fly rod, I am not sure what it weighed but it was a
hog. We sat there for a second looking at the fish, it was 1inch shorted
than him, he then decided we would let it go, he said it was too big to take
home. I thought that was the best, he knew we should let it go. We both
assisted in releasing the fish, and it swam away strong after quite a few
minutes of reviving.
The rest of the day I didn’t have a care in the world, we got into more
small stripers on the fly rod, and he pulled them in. To this day he is my
best fishing partner, we go out together quite often, but he has yet to
catch another striper that big. Something in my life changed that day, that
day brought my nephew and myself together with a bond that will never be
broken. When ever things in life are not going my way I just think of that
day back in August 2003 and my worries go away.
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Re: Big Hog Caught By A Little Guy With A Fly
by jeremy on December 31, 2004 http://www.fliesandfins.com | | Great Story DAN! Nothing really satisfies the soul like helping the youngsters catch fish. ESPECIALLy a fish like that. That is a really cool story. Can you help me catch A 47" striper next season???? |
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