Unexpected catch of a lifetime!

Elias Espiritu , aka @kurupt_hawaiian on IG, shared this amazing land-based, light tackle catch. No net, no gaff, no problem!  

It’s March 15, 2019. I’m sitting at home  it’s about 9:30am and I’m bored. I know I have to be back home early to pick up my son from preschool, so I’m unsure if I want to go fishing or not since I’d only have a little while to fish. I love to fish and try to go as much as possible. I decide to go anyways for a quick trip. I grab my light gear, SPX PE1 rod, shimano Twinpower xd 4000 spooled with 20lb test Jbraid. I plan on catching hopefully one or two pan fry sized papios to eat. I pull up to my spot and throw on my go to lure, the daiwa sp minnow with about 5 feet of 20lb fluoro for leader. I’m whipping for about 20 minutes then finally I catch a small 2-3lb barracuda. I snap a quick picture, take it off the hooks and throw him back in the water.

     5 minutes later I’m at the edge of the water and to my left I see 6 big black shadows swimming my way. I’m thinking these are GT’s so I cast out to my right to try and time it so my lure swims in front of them then BAM! One of them takes it and jets straight out into the deep. It rips my line out so fast and hard I thought I was gonna start seeing smoke coming from my reel. I tighten down my drag little by little just to try and slow him down a bit, but I don’t want to tighten it too much or I’ll break my line, so I let him continue to run and hopefully he’d tire out soon. After what seemed like forever he finally stops running but he’s waaaay out there, my spool is really low on line. I slowly bring him in and finally see something. It looks yellow. I think to myself “Is that a yellowfin tuna? Holy crap I need to land this thing!” Now all I can think is, “Awww man if I don’t land this thing nobody is gonna believe me.”

     The fish is finally in close and I have to go down closer to the edge of the rocks and water to try to keep my line from hitting any rocks so I don’t get it cut or snapped off. The waves start surging in and getting a little dangerous as they could suck me right into the strong current, but I want this fish badly. I decide to take a few poundings to attempt to stay close to the edge to keep my line from wrapping around the rocks. The waves knock me down and scratch me up pretty good and my line gets wrapped around a rock anyways. I’m panicking trying to get my line off the rocks before the fish tries to run again and cuts my line. I finally get it off and don’t feel any pressure, I thought I lost it. I start reeling in the slack and oh there it is, he’s still on, I was so happy. But it wasn’t over yet, I still gotta figure out how to land him cause I’m all by myself with no gaff or anything.

Finally another guy walks up to me and asks what I’m hooked up to, I tell him it’s a yellow fin tuna and he sees it right after. I ask him if he can help me land it and he doesn’t even hesitate. He jumps down onto the low ledge with me where the waves are dangerous and waits, I tell him I’m gonna try to get the fish up to the surface when a wave comes and he can try to grab it, I make sure to tell him not to grab the line because it will snap. First a big wave comes and we both grab onto the rock to try to hold on, the wave almost takes both of us in, I’m thinking “damn this is crazy” haha. Finally by the next wave I got the fish to the surface and tried yanking him up with the wave, he catches the fish and hugs it not letting him go, and works his way up the rocks with the fish while I’m dead tired trying to climb back up.

We celebrate, I’m happy as can be, adrenaline still sky high, some tourist spectators came to check it out too and gives me some video footage that they took of me fighting the fish. They ask if I was cut up from the rocks and I said no at first, then one of the guys say “but you’re bleeding.” I’m like “oh I guess I am.”

     

I get home and weigh the fish a few times to make sure the weight is accurate, he’s a steady 34.5lbs. I’m so stoked, and can’t believe what I just pulled off. Adrenaline ran high for the rest of the day. I don’t even realize all the cuts, scrapes, and bruises I have until I take a shower. It wasn’t until the next day that I felt all the pain in my body from falling on the rocks and fighting the fish. It was all so worth it though. I don’t recall exactly how long the fight was, but from the time I took the picture of the barracuda at 10:44am and the first picture I have of the shibi at 11:25am, I just estimate it around 30 minutes.