Photo by Philippe Bourjon
A report from SteveL for mikescatchreport.com
(The following event occurred on April 24)
So here’s the rest of the fish tale.
Yesterday (Thursday) morning I pulled out my 7 weight TFO fly rod to test the new Cortland Liquid Crystal line I had just got off of Ebay for $30. I wanted to test the combo to see how it casts and I had a couple of hours to burn before I had to take my daughter to school.
The tide was very low and rising, so I figured that the best place to go would be a part of the flats that has deeper water and where only a few fishermen go. The weather was fair with gusty winds up to 20mph, a great day to fly fish.
I waded out a couple of hundred yards and started my ritual stretching of my fly line before casting. The Cortland line is fairly stiff and has a memory, causing it to coil in the stripping basket even after stretching. But this did not affect the cast too much as I was able to layout all my line to the backing.
Attached to my new line was a 12’ tippet of Spectra mono with a taper of 70-50-40 pound test and a 30 pound leader. The Spectra line is ultra-thin, strong and stiff and turns over heavy flies well in high wind. But enough of the technical stuff.
I worked the area and deeper patches while wading out further, staying in thigh deep water. Within fifteen minutes I hooked up to a nice 5 pound Oio (bonefish) and landed it after it made several short runs. A half hour later I cast into a deeper pocket, stripped about 20 feet and got a strike about 75 feet out.
This fish started a brief run ripping across the flats, kicking up a rooster tail, then it took off for the breakers with 100 yards of my backing. Wow, this was no small fish. At the time I thought that I had hooked a good size Oio.
I chased after the fish to keep it from taking more backing. At one point it was fighting in one position for a couple of minutes and I take that as a bad sign, that the line is snagged on the reef. I followed the line out, expecting to get cut off at any moment. After I retrieved about fifty yards the fish starts to move again, which meant my line wasn’t hung up. The fish starts arcing towards shore this time and goes on several more runs. I worked it to within forty feet and I could see the iridescent blue on its fins and back. An Omilu (Bluefin Trevally)! And it still has plenty of fight left.
The Omilu turns sideways and we do this “dance," going round and round in between short runs. I wasn’t going to force this fish in as it would only bend my hook straight. Those lazy circles got smaller and smaller until I was able to leader the fish and claim my prize by the tail.
I decided to head to shore after that. Didn’t think I could do any better.
As I was washing my equipment at the showers, SteveT walks up to me to say hello. He just blew his mind when he saw my fish. He scaled it at just over 10 pounds. My first Ulua on a fly rod (Editor's note: any species of Jack over 10 pounds is considered an "Ulua," a full-grown fish and a worthy catch). Other park goers were coming up to see the catch and were amazed that I was able to land the fish with a fly rod. But you know as well as I that it’s no big deal, we catch fish all the time, we just don’t usually keep them.
Aftermath. I called my doctor friend and she picked up a portion of the fillet as well as the head and bones to make fish soup. The fish also made good sashimi and karaage.