Set out driving yesterday after work with a friend that's a female, my surf fishing set ups and basic gear, 1/2 dozen recently caught surf macks and some drinks on ice in a cooler, change of clothes, all hastily thrown in my car... and headed towards the coast with no particular destination in mind set. It was one of those, let's just pack it up, get outa here, go, and see where things lead me type plan or, non plan you could say. Picked up a pizza on the way, took a canyon road over the hill and asked her left or right when we hit PCH. "North" she says. OK I say (as I'm thinking to myself, damn, why'd she say that, the better spots are to the right...)You have to remember this isn't slated as a hard core mission to fish trip in her mind, we're just taking a drive. So northward we head, past a few spots I knew had potential for fish but would require a bit of a walk into, that I knew would draw some whining, so I didn't make the suggestion...and the now what had turned into a scenic drive up the coast for her continued on, and on some more, until finally she said "oh look how pretty that beach is, let's stop here for a while. As I'm thinking to myself, of all the places we had passed by and she picks this snaggy bottom, lose my rig everycast looking stretches of coast with just a small patch of sand to put a blanket down on beach that I havn't fished for over 20 years because I remember losing 10 rigs in 10 casts the one time I had tried it. So I casually tie on a rig to one of my set ups cast it out with half a mack on it, and put it up in my rod holder, prepared to just let it sit till she's ready to move on in 30 minutes or so, when I'll be stuck and have to snap it off, like I remember from my brief encounter 20 or so years ago here. So, before I even can get sat down and comfortable, I hear my reel start out screeeaming at one speed, fast! Not really prepared for that to happen so soon, I struggle to get it out of the holder, fumble to tighten down the drag knob and burn the sh!t out of my hand against the braid flying off the spool, tighten down into it too much for it's initial run and.... pop, I feel that dreaded slack line weightlessness that doesn't even provide enough tension to wind the line back onto your spool. So, I go from zero to 100 , 100 to zero without warning within a span of less than a minute. Leaving me in that simultaneous full adrenaline rush, loud cussing mode, that I'm sure most of you have experienced before, with my friend just looking at me like, "what a freak" and me loudly muttering "f@ck, that was big, it was f@cking big! sh!t!" to myself. LOL...So I sit down for 5 or 10 minutes, have a smoke, and try to wind down a bit before I retie, bait up and cast out again. I pin 3/4 of a mack on a pully rigged 12/0 circle hook and launch it out again. Before I can take up enough slack to get the hook up to the pulley I feel thump, thump, slack.. thump,then click-click-click-click, line tightening up from a constant slow steady pull for a bit, until I give my drag knob a turn down, and I can feel the pressure slowly load up and set the circle hook. Now it's that moment when whatever just got the hook set in the corner of it's mouth feels some unnatural resistance to it's swimming, panics, it's flee instinct kicks in, and it's the hold on tight and hope 3/4 of the spoon sn't get peeled off before it slows down any. After about a 100yd initial run away from any structure it slows to an almost stop I feel a sense of relief as all held up through the initial run and at this point I'm 95% sure it's a big bat I've hooked into. So I think to myself this is a perfect time to explain to a rookie, without words, what this fishing thing is about, and put the butt of the rod in the side of her hip, put her hand up on the fore-grip, and say hold this up like this, don't let it be pulled it down, as it starts it's second run that I knew it would, and easily beats her at the arm wrestling match and gets the rod to a position pointing directly out at it and almost yanks my whole set up right out of her hands completely. At this point I say, "see, they're really strong huh?, let me finish fighting it." and me thinking, how stupid am I? My best set-up almost just got pulled into the drink. Anyhow it's close to an hour of the classic type bat ray give and take type power battle and another 15 minutes in the skinny before I can wade in and and grab onto it by it's gill ports and drag the 54" beast out of the wash and up onto some wet sand. I just hear a bewildered "Oh my god, look at that thing" as the big bat is grunting and slapping it's wings on the wet sand. I tell her to take some quick pics for me and gets a few snapped before my cell phone's battery dies.
This was only the first one of the night and in the next few hours got 2 more bats onto the sand along with a nice 56 inch Leo. This night the these surf bats were more then welcome to be back on the end of my line again. This was one of the fun times that fishing can provide, that only a small percentage of people will ever be able to understand but I think I added one to that mix last night
Thanks for reading my montage if you got this far
JOE
