June 16th report unbelievable!
I had Tony Curtis and his daughter Riley out yesterday and we had a chance at one of the largest fish I've ever had hooked on the Chip. We started at about 9:00am and fished for about an hour before a fish came up and ate Riley's Pacemaker. She got scared and just watched it swim with the bait for a few secconds before it dropped it. Riley is only nine years old so that's to be expected. Tony and I got a good laugh out of it. A little further down the spot a fish hit my Corey Meyer bucktail. I had a good hookset and knew it was a good fish but didn't know how good at first. I kind of thought I had it hooked good so since Riley just missed one and was bummed out I said how about you help me bring this one in. She fought the fish for a while and when the fish came up to the boat she screamed and jumped back and dropped the rod. I was right there so we didn't have any slack line. I just grabbed the rod and kept fighting the fish. After a few minutes I ran the fish into the net that Tony had ready in the water but Tony went into shock because he put the net straight down in the water and didn't scoop the fish. The fish just backed out of the net and swam to the front of the boat. Tony tried again and froze up again. It was like he just went brain dead as soon as the fish got close to him. Finally on the third try the lure got stuck in the net. I couldn't let off pressure with the rod so I tried giving Tony instructions on what to do but nothing I said proccessed in his mind. I kept saying "Tony pick the net up the fish is in the net" and "Tony just lift up on the far end of the net" but he was in total shock. Finally when I knew he wasn't going to snap out of it I said Tony just grab the fish. Tony grabbed the fish by the gill and the fish shook off and swam away with the bait in the net and the fish off to the Chip. I am certain that this fish was 52 inches give or take a half inch either way. I'd lean toward the far side of 52 inches. I'd guess it was a 45 to 48 pound fish. The crazy thing is that Tony has caught a ton of fish before but he just freaked out when he saw how big that fish was. I've had Tony out a lot and trust me nobody feels worse than him about what happened. We laughed about it because what else can you do. We just screwed up. It happends. Why can't it happen on a 35 incher though.
We did catch a 36 incher later on the same bucktail. A little anticlimatic though.
