5/4 How to empty the hotel...

[FullFlavorPike]

May the Fourth be with us all! I was going to keep mum about it for a few days, but it's pretty blown up now.

It was me. I caught the big thresher.

Unreal experience out there yesterday. The didn't show up, but the WFO thresher bite had the entire lineup of kayakers hooting and hollering like six-year-olds catching overgrown goldfish in a city park somewhere. For the guy who made the "Why we do it" page, well, yesterday about summed it up for me.

Up front, I'll say I could not have done this without Lucas, Chad, and Justin pitching in.

I hooked up twice. Got the second one to the boat after a long, hard fight. He never jumped, and mostly stayed down deep. When I first hooked up, he didn't run or anything, and I thought maybe I had a big black on the other end. I wound up hard and got right over him, which is when he decided to take a run 90 degrees to port, which nearly flipped the Malibu II. Managed to stay on top of the boat and rode around while he ripped through a few kelp strands, and made pretty tight circles like a gigantic yellowtail. Half an hour of pulling got him to color, at which point I realized just how big the fish was. He was barely fighting, and even with the drag buttoned down I could barely raise him.

This is my first time fighting anything close to this big. I was going for the release, but by the time I got him to the boat he was non-responsive. I had the three aforementioned guys nearby, and we all agreed that there was a better than even chance that cutting him loose would end up with watching his corpse sink to the bottom and becoming lobster food. I couldn't handle that, so I decided it was my responsibility to see to it that he got eaten. When Chad and Justin agreed to take their share of the meat after I butchered the fish, I knew it wouldn't go to waste.

There was now way the fish was getting into the boat, so I tied a line around his tail, and, with Chad and Justin pulling in their Hobies and Lucas doing guard duty, we got it back to the beach in like an hour and a half.

Plenty of rapt tourists on the beach. Even the hotel staff was coming out to take a gander and snap some selfies. By the time I got everything loaded up to go, the concierges and counter staff were coming out in their cashmere sweaters and high heels to ogle the shark filling the bed of my full-size pickup. It was a really cool experience.

I never got the shark weighed, because I knew it was going to be a long day of cleaning up and I didn't have the time to drive to the landing, unload everything, reload, then head home. I'm no trophy hunter, so a fair estimate of 150 pounds is good enough for me. This fish was big. I didn't finish breaking it down till 4 PM, then I had to go to the car wash to get all the blood out of my truck! I must say, a lined truck bed parked on a slight incline is a great way to clean a large fish and trap the gore.

Chad made good on his promise to take some meat. He met me last night and I delivered like a third of the meat to him. Lucas got his last night, too. I've already gifted out a large amount to friends and neighbors, and I'm left with about as much as me and the wife can eat. It's not going to waste.

I definitely learned a lot about pulling on an outsized gamefish yesterday, and I think I'll be able to do a better release in the future. But I feel good about having taken such a monster, and those sweet thresher steaks have already made a lot of people happy.