Topsail fishing report - 9/4/06

[Topsail Angler]

Pier Dweller and I headed out this morning at first light to do some king fishing. My live well pump died on Saturday so we fished with frozen bait instead. We headed out to some ledges just about a mile off Jolly Roger pier, nothing after an hour so we moved out to AR362. Again nothing after an hour but one knock down so we headed south to Dallas rocks. There we had a hook-up but lost it due to the captain/mate (me) not getting the other rods cleared in time

Next hook-up was brought almost to the boat, we could see it was a med sized mackerel. Just about then we saw a flash of silver hit the fish slashing it in half then coming back for the other half. But when he came back, he got hooked up and the fight began.

Pier Dweller deftly fought that guy for 45 minutes! We weren't sure but thought it might be a shark, it didn't fight like a king. We knew it was huge so we decided to fight it, after all it had been a slow day and this fish was in a fighting mood!

Finally as PD got it to the boat we could see it was a huge barracuda! As a testimant to PD's fighting ability, he caught this 40# plus (estimate based on his length and girth) fish on 20# tackle with a foul hook in his side as the only hook-up! Way to Go PD!

We were tired (did I say we?...lol) and it was about family time so we headed back in.

This is the second time I've had Pier Dweller on my boat and hope to have him many more times, he's a classy fisherman with great skills. But I think if he keeps showing up on boats, we will have to get him a new name!