James River Heartbreak 9-2-2012

well this was our first trip to the James in a good long while the bite has been really slow down there with a nice fish being caught every once in a while , and we had to compete with what was left of the hurricane coming east towards VA  we met Capt. Hugh  down at his boat at 545 pm  when we got there it was pouring down rain so we ate some dinner and waited it out for about an hour or so after the rain settled down we made a run out to the main river to get bait met a buddy of our " mean gene" and he hooked us up with a good bit of bait i threw the cast net a few times to pick up a couple live shad we made a run to our first spot  after 20 minutes of sitting on the spot Robby hooked up with a decent fish it pulled the hook right next to the boat 15 minutes later his rod loads up again i netted the fish it hit the 40 lb mark  we made a move after a while and did a little drift fishing Robby picked up a 31 lb blue doing that  then Hugh caught a 17 lbr


  i had only had 5 bites one pull down and a miss  so i was kinda bummed at about 1 am i had a bait drifting on my quantum big cat rod  when Hugh looked at his depth finder and said " uhh oh  we got a monster stalking a bait " 2 seconds after he said that my big cat rod was literally buried under the boat at a 90 degree angle with 2 eyelets in the water i jumped up out of my seat  all hell was breaking loose  i could not get the rod out of the holder i tried 3 times and the rod was still bent under the boat so i had to do something i would never recommend just because it is stupid but it was the only thing i could think to do in a split second i grabbed the for grip of the rod with my left hand and stripped line out with my right hand to take some pressure off it worked i got the rod out and immediately the fish tried pulling me down to my knees had the fish on for about 15 seconds after i got the rod out then all of a sudden it went slack


 i reeled the slack in and the line had broke  i dropped to my knees and hung my head over the side of the boat i thought i was going to puke i was so sick to my stomach after about 3-4 minutes of silence Hugh said that was a monster then tells me in all his 25 + years on the river that was the most violent hit he has ever seen now that's saying something then Robby and Hugh ask me how it feels to have lost possibly a potential 80-100+ lb fish i said not good not good at all



      i had to lick my wounds for the rest of the night i barley wanted to fish anymore  we ended up fishing until 630 am Monday morning got  home about 9 i went to bed when i woke up i inspected the rod i hit the huge fish on  and looked at the break in the line and noticed the line was frayed  then i ran my hand down 6 ft of line and it was all tore up  and then looked at the reel and saw the line was dug down into the spool in 6 different spots  one spot the line dug back down into the reel almost a 1/2 inch which was not like that before we fished and i know for sure was not like that when the fish hit i just could not believe the raw power of that fish but its OK i had my nightmares about it last night and I'm at one with it lol  Robby ended up having 4 fish for the night total a 41, 31,28,and a 10 lbr   it was a beautiful night on the river sturgeon jumping everywhere  just and awesome night except for the obvious lol

we will get that big pig next time i know where she roams now