July 8th, 2005 - Bucksnort and Bucksniffle


Bucksnort (Danny Webb) and his son Bucksniffle (Blake) went out to the Jetties for a bit of fishing. On the day - Blake caught this nice Spanish Mackerel along with several shark up to 3 foot. I also caught several shark - one about 4 foot. And Danny - well he caught many hardhead. (So much for the fishing lesson he promised me..... grin)

However, Danny did latch into something that was incredibly big. We fought the fish for 3 hours - chased it about 2 miles out from the end of the jetty - back into the ship channel - almost half way back down the jetty before we tightened the drag down and broke it off. We were fighting it on a Penn 309 and 50lb test line.

At best guess, it was a giant Ray - but we never saw it.

Here is Danny's version of the 3 Hour Fight -

Myself, Bucksniffle and DaParson went out on a trip yesterday. My plan was to find some slot reds but my spot was blown out from all the storms and the wind changes. When we got out there we had a west wind going and it was muddied up. So we went out to DaParson's fishing hole on the N.Jetty. It was definetly the Daparson/Bucksniffle show. With those two catching the most fish. They caught nice sharks with Daparson catching a really nice one. Bucksniffle caught a good sized Spanish Mac. I was catching hardheads....and they weren't even trophy size.

I was kicking back enjoying a diet root beer when my penn 309 on a shakespere sturdy stick, began screaming. It was around 11:15 am. I grabbed it as fast as I could and the fight was on. The fish was coming straight back to the boat, passed up the boat and headed out to open ocean. We got the anchor up and the chase was on. For the next 3 hours and 15 min we would be fighting this fish. It took us clear across the channel dodging ships and pilot boats. Almost to the S. jetty, back to the north and down toward the boat cut. I fought the fish for 2 solid hours then handed the rod to Daparson. He fought it for 30 min and handed the rod to Bucksniffle. Bucksniffle almost got pulled overboard.

During the battle the reel began heating up and we had too dowse it with water several times. It locked up on us twice. This fish had no intentions of quitting...We COULD NOT tire this thing. At about 3 hours the rod was handed back to me and we decided to bear down on the drag. We were all tired and gas supply was getting lower and lower. After that it didn't take long for the 50lb test to snap, I did see the fish once. It was a 50 foot whale shark. (laughing)

Watch the 3 minute video of the fight by clicking here. (broadband only - For some reason we can't get the movie to work with Mozilla Firefox Browser - but works fine with Microsoft Explorer)

We saw one of the many waterspouts reported - but they were never close to us.

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