Windy Willard

[ZUKI_BLUE]

Hi JJANIE, it was a real challenge especially the first one that.To begin when I troll at that speed I set my line counter real with the drag as light as possible with the clicker on. It would’ve taken all my line if I hadn’t started to tighten up slightly on the Drag. The minute he hit, I went into neutral with the boat. Normally wouldn’t do that but there was enough wind and waves that I felt mother nature could keep a tight line and I needed all the help I could get. My line counter measured 75 feet longer than where I started. the rest is real patience, no pun intended. After he hit he ran right under my other line. There was no way that I could wind in the other line and fight him also so I just let that line stay there figuring I’d probably be twisted up but I still might get him. He continued around The right side of the boat and looked like he was going to circle The bow mount trolling motor. At that point I took a right with the boat using my trolling motor and remote and headed straight west to avoid that from happening as I knew I could not raise the trolling motor and he was sure to be heading for a wraparound. All this time my drag was still set low enough that he could run easily whenever he wanted. I found I could still make headway in bringing him in by working him like they do in big ocean fishing, raising the rod tip slowly and then winding in lowering the rod tip keeping pressure but not too much. He must’ve made 10 runs at various links getting shorter as he got more tired. When I finally got him to where I could see him near the boat, I actually loosened the drag so that if he did head snap he wouldn’t break off ,hopefully. He made about five more runs From Boat side to maybe 10 or 15 feet out. Finally he was all worn out, I could tighten my drag out a little more and he literally came to the top laying on his side too tired to do anything. And I net it. When I got him out of the net he was too tired to even the flop around, he allowed pictures and I gently put him back in the water and held him by his lower lip and held him there in a vertical position until he told me it was time to leave. I held him so long that I began to think he was not going to make it, but I still held him and all of a sudden his tail wiggled in his head wiggled , I let them go and you just slowly turned and headed Straight down, not very fast, but I knew he was ok.
None of this was fast Don’t know how much it was ,but it was a long period of time maybe 15-20 minutes by the time I released him.
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