Thread: what is your favorite catch/fight/ ever?

i was just thinking of this and i’m sure it’s been asked many times but do you have a fond (or miseable) memory of an eventful catch or even the one that got away? i bet we all have one that stands out.

What Tater called my 15 minutes of fame & glory...

Not fond, but memorable:
Several years ago, there was this HUGE pompano that I tried to sling over the rail. In so doing, I snapped the scapholunate ligament in my wrist and the pomp hit the rail and went back into the water. I had to have wrist reconstruction surgery later in the year, as a result of my fishing injury.

my first striper over 20 lbs- on 10 lb test on a 9' ugly stik gx2 below a dam on the arkansas river in current- watched the line peel off the reel until I could see the spool. thought for sure I'd be spooled, and I almost was.

The only? state sponsored king/spanish tourney on the new pier
First day (Saturday )with the rail elbow to elbow hooked and landed the winning spanish 5lb-15oz (David Lea caught a 6lb-2oz the next day but wasn't in the tourney) then the last day with only 1 king caught 15 lb by Tater, I hook and almost land a king that was over 30lb, the gaff hook tore out on the way up and down it went & gone (wish I had slim gaff it)....the gaffer was in the tourney late Bryan ? .....I think he felt worse then me, so I gave him an extra gaff I had (looking to give it away anyway) so he could get some practice
Always liked him and sorry he couldn't over come his issue that cost him his life

another (that I have many)
2012 being part of 196 kings caught , plus numerous bull reds & jacks.....leaving the pier sore as heck between catching,gaffing & netting
Pier record surpassing the few days before of over 100 kings. (I missed do to..... to windy I thought) never again , its sucks reading about it later....lesson learned

Back in '14 I made it to the octi just before daylight and had just put my cart in place when I heard someone say "It's a cobe!!" I grabbed my ling rod and ran to the rail-someone was hooked up and that was what the commotion was about. I dropped my jig in (too dark to see anything) and was instantly hooked up.

The fight was not all that long but the fish swam between two of the close pilings and went under the pier. Thankfully he came back out between the same two and Pug gaffed him for me. My first (and so far only) cobia from the pier. It weighed 27.4lbs, I wouldn't kill one that size again but I was happy to keep it at the time.

I had a VERY large pompano on and a state game warden standing beside me said .... I will help you... and grabbed the line which was spider wire and started up with the fish. After several pulls the line cut his hand pretty badly and he dropped the fish and the hook pulled out. With a little help from someone with a net I would have caught my largest pompano ever.

October of 2015 I was ballooning live bait when my rod jumped almost off the rail and the fight was on hard and whatever it was pulled hard and went to a 45 degree angle to the pier and "stopped" and as hard as I tried I could not move it an inch for a while and then pop my line came loose and something started swimming toward the pier and a nice fisherman came up with a big net and watched and it was a 48" Bull Red and it took us quite a while to get it into the net and then up to the boardwalk and then we noticed the 2 half circles on the side from a shark that was holding it fast and not moving. I continued fishing after releasing the fish. Well the next morning m right leg would not move and hurt badly so off to South Baldwin ER where I found I pulled my sciatic nerve and had to hobble for weeks during physical therapy until it healed.

While free lining a hardtail for a king on the south east side, I heard my wife telling me to come to where she was. I could hear a loud noise, I wasn't sure what it was, when I made it the the west side near the draw, there must have been an acre or more of reds and jacks hitting the surface. I took the live hardtail and tossed it out, once it hit the water a large jack inhaled it. It was a fun fight, back and forth with a few good runs. My 12 month pregnant wife grabbed the net and assisted the landing. I think we over fished every time she is pregnant, and it makes her less inclined to want to fish when she's not pregnant now....

Mine has to be from the long ago and far off times when I was running a charter boat back in the late seventies. Some of us had been reading about how broadbill swordfish were being caught off South Florida, and we decided that we should give it a try. Capt. Ricky McDuffie, who is still running charters, volunteered his boat, the Sea Hunter, and four of us, including my deck hand, the late Harry (Animal) Allen took off south to where the water was WAAAYYYY over our heads. It was the full moon in October with a calm sea---couldn't have asked for better conditions.

We didn't really expect too much since this was an exploratory trip, so we only bought four of the huge squid recommended for bait, and I rigged them up on the way out. I think Ricky just ran south until the fathometer couldn't reach bottom. When he stopped, we put the lines out at 50' depths, using as little weight as needed and clipping a light stick on each leader. There was so little drift that the lines off the Penn 130's were pretty much straight up and down. In less than thirty minutes, Robin was up on the bridge with Ricky and Harry was getting a cold one when the first strike came on the 50' line. It wasn't hard or fast, just a steadily increasing buzz. I grabbed the rod out of the holder and I guess I let him swim too long or something because the fish dropped the bait. I reeled in and re-rigged and accepted huge heaps of blame that were being dumped on me for missing what might be our only strike of the night.

It was just long enough later for the others to be playing grab-ass or something, when the second fish hit, this time on the 100' line. I was standing by the rod and grabbed it, this time not letting more than a long count of three go by before setting the hook repeatedly. It was solid. The fight was straight up and down and we had no idea what was on the line, but the heavy tackle started winning pretty quickly. The double line came up and Harry shined a spotlight over the stern and yelled, " G-d d-amn, what a bill!". He grabbed the sword, stuck his other hand in the fish's gills and one-handed it into the cockpit.

Later in the night, Ricky caught one, we had one bait eaten off, and Harry stuck his hand down the throat of my fish and got the squid back to put on a hook and catch one for himself. Back at the dock, mine was the biggest at 133# and was the first broadbill caught on sporting tackle brought into an Alabama port, so I held the state record for a brief time. (The other two were 122# and 130#.) Quite a night.

I had another trip with Harry that following spring when we caught cobia off Pensacola until we should have been ashamed, but that's another story.