The tuna were running of the coast of southern California and JG gave me the call “It’s on, we’re leaving tomorrow night - you in?” Next thing I know I’m 60 miles off the coast with a huge fish running me around the boat. The fish were biting huge and the day was epic
It is all becoming a hazy now as if it couldn’t have been real. Jumping on a boat at 9pm, sleeping with 30 guys in the bunk room overnight and waking up in the middle of no where to the biggest fish I’ve ever caught. I was still quite hazy from 5 hours of sleep in a strange bunk that rocked all night long when reality hit hard in the form of 29 guys all yelling that there was a tuna strike. Mass confusion followed as we all got our rods, pulled out a live sardine out of the bait tanks, put it on our hooks and tossed them overboard. As I was marveling in confusion and huslte the real insanity hit in the form of a 12+ pound tuna on my line. First it hit so hard that the rod almost flew out of my hands, then it decided to go all the way around the back of the boat causing me to go over, under or around just about every other person fishing. To make it even more fun about 5 of them had fish hooked as well and we were all scrambling to get around each other while fighting the fish frantically. It was probably just a few minutes but it felt like it had been forever when I finally landed my first tuna. The school had passed us by at that point and the atmosphere on the deck returned to one of hopeful anticipation that we’d see more tuna soon.