LJ 6/14 am

[SDdude]

Hey Rastrev,
that was me bendo with the thresher by the reserve's corner buoy. Again, thank you very much for answering the call for an assist. I had that thresher on for about 15 minutes, hoping someone with a camera would come along, and you answered the call. My usual fishing buddy couldn't sneak away from work that morning. It sucks to have a thresher on, then two on, and no one around to witness it or photograph it (from a safe distance, of course). The thresher was circling my yak doing laps, occassionally jumping clean out of the water, as they do. Would have made a great video footage. He wasn't a big one, 4.5 to 5 feet. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the thresher alongside the yak to give you a good photo op, but I appreciate any bendo photos you may have taken.

Actually, at one point I had a double hookup with threshers. When I was on with thresher #1, I had forgotten all about my other line in the water. While fighting #1 out in front of my yak, I heard a commotion behind me, turned to see another thresher jump out of the water about 20 ft behind me, and that's when my other line peels out. Shit! So I backed off the drag a bit on #1, put the rod down and sat on it, then began to fight number two. Fortunately, #2 somehow became unbuttoned after a couple of minutes. Fine with me, allowed me to concentrate on #1. I think that's right about when you showed up. To finish the story, I lost #1 when, as he was along side me about 3 or 4 feet down, he made a run directly under my kayak and ran the spectra right through one of my Mirage Drive Turbo fins. Put a slice about a 3rd of the way through the fin, and the additional drag of that allowed the thresher to break the line off at the hook. Note to Hobie Mirage Drive yakkers: when fighting a thresher (or any other large game fish) with Spectra, it may be a good idea to take the ten seconds needed to pull the drive up and out of harm's way. Just another in a long succession of fishing "micro-lessons" I learned from that incident. I wasn't looking for a thresher hookup, and I wasn't prepared for it either with a buddy, equipment, or experience, so it's probably a good thing it ended the way it did, with no damage to body parts.

Again, thanks for the assist, Rastrev. I sent you a PM before I saw your post. Should have checked those first...

--Raleigh

Originally Posted by rastrev

launched a little after 4:30am and headed to the pier for bait, tough to make bait until greylight, then it was a nice assortment of spanish, greenies, and sardines, after that started heading out, ran into a guy bendo on a thresher, his story to tell, as I made it around the nw corner of the reserve started trolling a couple greenies, something tugs at my bottom bait, so a pick up the rod, take off the clicker, and wait... nothing, so I decided to reel it in to check my bait when it is about 30 ft away I see a 4-5 ft shark come up and grab it, rod loads up, then a couple seconds later it was gone, I didn't get a great look at it, but did get a good look at the tail and it definitely was not a thresher, I'm guessing mako
Anyways that was the excitement for me today other than having to deal with knothead biting off a couple of my baits