
Great reading these stories and glad the original thread lives on. I posted a story on this thread 8 years ago!
Anyway a couple of late springs ago I solo camped on Bear Island for 3 days. The wind was stout, blowing over 20 out of the SE which was right in my face as Bear faces South and my 6 decade old body struggled a bit on the 3 mile paddle with a couple of hundred extra pounds of gear in a Nucanoe. Hoping to find some early live bait I used that as an excuse to stop often and rest. The beauty of a solo trip is that an agenda doesn't exist.
Turned out bait was sparse though I did cast net a few each day but outside of catching some blues and small sharks in the surf in front of camp I did not hook a Red on this trip. Until the last day. I was in the lagoon behind camp, maybe 5 feet off the bank and lobbed a finger mullet off a clump of grass out ahead of the kayak to which a fine fish grabbed it immediately and the circle hook did its job. It was a heavy, powerful fish and it's first run was out to the middle of the lagoon which took him maybe 3 seconds to do. I felt I had a good shot at him though with quality gear and the drag on the Ci4 set very firm yet fully functional which would wear the fish down. Then he turned and ran straight at the kayak. Reeling furiously he blew past the kayak and I got a good look at the over slot fish. A solid 30 incher. The line came tight at close range behind the yak and my 7 foot rod is doing a 180 with this green as a cucumber and ticked off red, making me wish my drag was a bit looser. The line parted at the fluoro leader which I had not retied in a couple of days due to little action. Lesson learned. All I wanted was his photo to cap off what was an awesome 3 days of nature.
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H2ohhh, Dr. H, Judge H...what the H? Nucanoe Frontier 12.