Our fly fishing Holoholo writer Jason shares the details of a how a big, smart fish had him on the ropes and he had to throw in the towel but luck and skill prevailed.

Jason: I managed to coax my friend Dave out for some fishing, so we decided to hit an old spot where we both started fly fishing together years ago. The plan was to hit our usual haunts, starting with bombing one of our favorite channels before moving west to sight fish. 
The channel ended up being dead, and an hour went by with only a single grab, which was probably a small papio.  With the tide bottoming out, we moved onto a shallower portion of the flat closer to the break to do some sight fishing.  

I saw a few as soon as I got out there, and had some decent shots with a couple follows.  I hadn’t done a ton of sight fishing with my new 11 ft Trout Spey, and was impressed by how it cast one-handed.   About the fourth fish I saw was the perfect setup – a lone fish swimming slowly straight at me from about 40-50 ft away.  I made my cast and carefully watched its body language as I slowly stripped the fly in.  I fully expected a follow, then a rejection, but instead saw him accelerate towards the fly, and wiggle a bit.   This was my chance!  I stripped sharply, felt the weight of the fish, and before I knew it he was headed for the horizon, literally.  

It felt like a pretty nice fish, and seemed intent on heading for open ocean.  Rather than risk breaking the fish off, I clamped down just a bit, but still allowed him to take line.  When I finally felt him slow down, I felt exactly what I dreaded – I could no longer feel the fish and instead felt the line stuck in the rocks.  I waded out as far as I could in a desperate bid to free it, but I was already pretty close to the break when I hooked him, so things were getting dicey.  At one point, I was up to my chest in water getting slammed by waves, so I decided to throw in the towel.  I was heart broken, but decided no fish was worth drowning over.

I reluctantly started walking backwards with the drag locked down, just like you do when breaking lead line while ulua fishing.   My line was stretching quite a bit, and at some point I realized the line wasn’t stretching at all, but was actually slipping against wherever it was pinned.  The line gradually loosened up and I could suddenly feel the fish again – I could not believe my luck.   I slowly brought the fish in, while praying that the line, hook and all my knots held together.  It would be incredibly anticlimactic for it to suddenly come off now, I thought to myself.  Luckily, the fish was so spent from struggling against the pinned down line that it came in without even making a second run.  I was ecstatic, mostly because I felt there was no way I should’ve landed it.   

Dave ended up getting a mongoose fish and a nunu, and the reports I got from other friends fishing nearby were mixed.  One friend had landed one and lost one, but the majority of the others (which include some VERY good sight fisherman) reported not seeing many fish.  Hmm…  I think I really got lucky today!