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Finally hooked a fish that stress tested my tackle, and me

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Half a year ago I was given a St Croix Mojo Salt conventional boat rod to test. Here’s why I upgraded to that rod over the G Loomis Bucara I had been using. Since then I’ve been in a slump and the biggest fish I landed was a 6lb mahi mahi. Well, that finally changed.

Frank’s ulua weighed in at 17 pounds

Frank and I hit our Eastside spot and looked for bait at 9am. Only thing I saw was a promising large mark 75ft down in 170ft of water that didn’t bite. On the advice of someone who found bait a couple weeks ago, we spread out and traveled a mile up current but didn’t encounter much on our fish finders. Then Frank radio’d that he was on a fish and a good amount of time later said he had landed his first ulua and biggest fish ever!

You can see the black tunsten weight on the right side of the aha’s head

Stoked for him and realizing my unweighted frozen opelu hadn’t been touched at all, I put on a 1.5 oz sliding tungsten weight to get the bait down a bit and make it swim more naturally. A few mins later the ratchet went off but I saw a blue bone needlefish (aha) jumping in the distance. I really hate those things. As I unhooked it, I noticed it bent the wire stinger leader a little and nicked the fluorocarbon leader. I didn’t expect anything noteworthy to bite so I just used the dinged up rig and put a twice refrozen opelu out.

A few mins later the ratchet went off again, in spurts and the line seemed like it was going straight down even though I was in only 80ft of water. I could feel the fish running through underwater caves but miraculously the fish came out and headed towards deeper water. Since Frank had just caught an ulua, I assumed the strong surging fish was a big ulua and was worried it would reef me soon but it stayed on and was brutishly strong.

I tried short pumping it up to break its spirit but it still pulled line off and headed back down to the bottom. I kept my feet on the foot pedals to steer with my Bixpy motor, but had to counter balance when the fish pulled from the side of the kayak. I tightened the drag on my Avet SX Raptor two-speed as much as I dared, and dropped into low gear. The reel still needed to give up line if the fish suddenly made a dash in a different direction.

Shaven but not beaten, Sufix Invisiline

I knew this was the biggest fish I ever fought and really wanted to see how big it was but my back and biceps were burning. After more than 30 mins I painfully got back all my braid and just the 30ft or so of fluorocarbon shock leader and 6ft of leader were out. I could see curly cues of the fluorocarbon scraped by the reef. Smaller ulua usually give up and get the bends in the last 50ft but this one fought me all the way to color.

I could see it was a silvery jack, and hoped it was a really big kagami ulua but no, it was a thick white ulua or GT. It was really hard to carefully slide it onto my lap without damaging its gills or jaw and I was too tired to lift it up when Frank came by to video with my GoPro.

I put it back in the water, holding its tail, and it kicked off and swam down strongly.

Thanks for documenting the catch Frank!

This is the gear that withstood the punishing runs of the estimated 50lb plus ulua. All but the Knot 2 Kinky titanium leader and the St Croix Mojo Salt rods are sold in the Store.