Choke strikes, back breaking fight and a jelly fish sting!

We picked a perfect light wind, small surf day on the South Shore for our last outing of 2018.  Frank on his Hobie Revolution 13, Kelly on his Costco SUP softy and me on my Scupper Pro were safely able to fish 2 miles out.  Frank was on a mission to catch live opelu, and Kelly paddled frozen oama around.  The opelu were spotted but didn’t bite for Frank and me.

I gave up trying to catch bait and put on some small, frozen opelu.  The baits were hit hard, with drag pulled but most didn’t stay on too long. The ones that showed themselves were aha so I paddled out deeper and dropped down on a spot we’ve caught uku and lost screamers before.

Instantly I got picked up by a strong, fast running fish that took half my line, more than 150 yds.  I was hoping it wasn’t a shark but the leader eventually cut at the rear hook and had some nicks in it.  I paddled back to the same spot, assuming “if got sharks got fish” and dropped another bait down. This one got picked up by what felt like a shark from the beginning.  I tried to break it off but it stayed on for more than 30 minutes as my back strained and my left bicep cramped.  And a not so funny thing happened.  As I was trying to pull the shark from the deep, what looked like a clear jellyfish tentacle was clinging to my main line (braid). I swished the tentacle free in the water but it must have drifted over to my ankle I had over the side of the kayak, and stung me. I felt the sting hours later on land.

 

I got the shark to color but it didn’t want to come up higher than 7 ft under the water.  It looked bigger than 5 ft to me, but at that point I may have been prone to making this gladiator sound bigger than it was. Didn’t feel safe unhooking it on my tippy Scupper Pro so I cut the line and it swam free.

The shark had dragged me about a quarter mile from where we started, and I didn’t want to hook another in the shark hole so I paddled in shallower. Felt good to shake out my tired arms that way.

Dropping another 6 inch frozen opelu down resulted in a foul hooked aha so I put on a 10 inch opelu.  Shark number 3 grabbed it, but I was able to pop it off.

Meanwhile, Kelly was slow trolling his oama on the way in and landed 4 of 6 aha strikes, mostly on the rear hook. He consistently has a very high landing ratio, and does it all standing or sitting on a foam SUP with no rod holder or net.  He kept two of the aha, fried them up as fish nuggets and will write up a catch and cook soon.  Frank stuck to his plan to damashi for opelu but just got incidentals for his efforts.

There was so much bait around  (opelu, flying fish, etc) I was really hopeful that we’d connect with a pelagic. At least 15 of my opelu baits were slammed.  Just didn’t convert those strikes to the target species.  Next calm weather day we’re gonna go even further out to avoid the aha, and maybe troll faster to attract pelagics instead of sharks.

I have purchased a wider, more stable offshore kayak I’m hoping will feel much safer battling big creatures in the deep.  I’m tired of using my legs as pontoons to stabilize the Scupper Pro and getting stung by jellyfish in the process!