Flying Gaff Mako

I will let him tell it!

Well the long awaited trip to the lumps is over and Im back at work today(total bummer). Anyway left for venice on saturday18th morning and made it to venice around 4 pm after one of the worst rides in history due to bad roads.Picked up 400 pounds of pogies at barnies and headed to our camp to set up for a run to the lumps on sunday.

Day one: left for the lumps at 5 am arrived at 6:45 and trolled around abit to see whats up (nothing but huge kingfished all released ) then decided to set the anchor down among the crowd of boats, which began a long and torturous process due to current conditions and a a short chain on the anchor. We had to drop it 5 times to get hung which was a real pain in the in the crowd but we finnally got set up .

Started to chum and fish and saw absolutley nothing for 6 hrs of fishing! left to rig fish to aleast get a tug and caught plenty of aj's and big red snappers all released.

Day two : A total repeat of day one except for the anchor which we fixed sunday night ,tried everything and couldnt buy a bite even though we saw a few other fish bieng landed we could find one. Left at dark with no fish and very discourged.

Day three: Well they say every dog has its day and it was our day ! from the second we anchored it was on big time ! classic lump fishing at its finest with 150 pounders rolling under the chum board and eating baits just tossed in; Awesome is all i can say, i even had a 150 pounder blow up right next to the boat on a top water plug. We caught 6(2 man limit as the other stayed back) fish back to back never losing any and all off these fish where big (110 , 125, 135, 142, 150, 156) that was our limit and we washed down and headed in early leaving them biting!

Day four: was a complete repeat of day 3, we anchored and slayed them from begining to end. We caught them on every bait we tossed in and had huge fish all around the boat all day long. With 7 fish in the boat ranging from 90 to 180 pounds we where looking pretty full for 3 anglers but I really wanted one on the fly rod for my buddy so we stuck it out longer than i would have stayed with a load like this. I decided to try one more big chunk of bonita myself and it was taken right away by something huge that ran off almost all the line off a tld 50 lrs that was loaded with 700 yards of spectra with a 100 pound top shot.

The fish slowed and began a long tug of war that began to run in my favor as after 1 hr or so we had the fish boat side. This fish was 200 pounds all day long and maybe bigger than the 226 i caught in mexico last year. As the fish made huge circles under the boat the florocarbon finally parted letting this huge beast free.

Then the real fun began ! as i sat bummed about the loss of that fish i saw the chum churn rocket up and almost fall in, so I looked over the side to see what the hell was going on only to see a 10 foot mako chewing on the end of it !!! so what to do ? i grabbed my aftco monster flygaff (which people always ask why ya got that aboard) and stuck it just after the gill area and secured the rope close to the boat.

The shark actully didn't do anything at first as if it was not even worried about me or my boat. We decided to wait a minute or two and then I dispatched the shark with the boat gun before attemping to land this shark into the boat. Easier said than done without a tuna door my friend as this fish was heavy and long but after much struggle and lots of pulling 3 of us where able to land this monster and run back in.

It took us 3 hrs to get back due to heavy fog but when we arrived to the docks we brought the big shark to the scales and it topped at 256 lbs . not a bad day of fishing ! after a having a mako shark dinner we went to bed and woke up to 35 knot winds that blew us out til saturday(needed a rest anyway).

On our last day we headed to the lump and caught a few blackfin and lost one nice yellowfin, but that was all she wrote. Headed in and packed up and left sunday for home . Overall it was a great trip and we came home with a load of fish!

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