Fellas and Fellesses, I think we need some sort of award for HY. Mr consistent?
Nice one HY.
You should know however that your good name is being sullied up here. It's on the side of a not insignificant boat, the skipper of which decided it was too much inconvenience to wait 20 seconds for me to get across the (not very comfortable) bar today and bulldozed his way alongside and passed me as if the two foot wake wasn't going to add significant risk to my bar crossing.
Such were the conditions I had waited 5-10 mins for a significant lull before committing and the only way this skipper could have shown less consideration would have been to mow right over the top of me.
But, and I'm not at all proud to report this, that wasn't the most sketchy or atrocious thing for the morning. That award has to go to a monstrous, for me, kingi that is now trailing over 230m of braid behind it, having spooled me. I'm talking very high 20's through to mid-30kgs.
Despite sneaking inside it (and dangerously close to rocks) before giving it some welly, it wised up after about 50m of heading out to sea and flew straight below the yak to a rock that was almost sucking dry on the larger sets. It found said rock then pulled a sharp right hand turn, secure in the knowledge it had my line snagged under the top ledge of the rock, and ran another 100+m before I could temporarily convince it the risk was over, but that only lasted about 50m or so before it again wised up and reversed course to continue stealing line while I tried to avoid catastrophe against the rocks and staying upright in the swell. No matter what I did or where I paddled around the face of the rock I just could not get the line free and could not convince the kingi to come back to the rock to help me.
During all this I saw the mono backing three different times and eventually had to watch as the last of the 2-trips-old braid disappeared followed by a whimpering ping of the mono.
First time I've ever been spooled and I'd very much welcome any advice how I could have recovered the situation. Any fish dragging that much line is terrible.