Highliner puts fly-angler on possible record bluefin

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BY MICHAEL SCHWEIT

SAN DIEGO— When you’ve got fished for bluefin, you’re conscious of how onerous it’s to get them eat a stay bait. Methods have modified that permit fast-falling specialty jigs to extend your fee of success however even then, it may be hours and hours of dropping and winding, dropping and winding till both your arm needs to fall off or the jig stops all of the sudden and also you may be latched onto the fish of a lifetime.

However, let’s make it a bit harder and add fly fishing to the combination. Whereas we’ve got fly rods, reels and features that may deal with absolutely anything, the angler nonetheless should steadiness on a pitching boat —a leisure sport boat no much less— and fireplace out a 60- to 70-foot solid and get the fish to eat. My buddy, Steve Petit, had all of that come collectively on a current journey and if confirmed, would be the new 20-pound class tippet world file on the fly at 25.9 kilos. However this didn’t occur in a vacuum and really happened from one very enthusiastic captain, Max Neue of the Highliner out of Seaforth Sportfishing. He went to date past any captain I’ve fished with in 40-plus years of doing charters that I might title him Captain of the 12 months.

Fly Fishing on a sportboat is hard sufficient as there’s actually no place to have a backcast. Max bought very intrigued with the fly-fishing facet, and after we began to identify foaming fish within the late afternoon, he labored with Colin Waters, a really skilled fly angler (and holder of two fly information, albacore and bluefin) to determine the right way to place the boat with the wind and waves. That is one thing that’s finished frequently with pangas however a 70-foot boat is an entire completely different sport. However he labored the Highliner into a large foamer of crashing bluefin till we have been inside 50 toes of the primary physique (what a ruckus they have been making!) and Colin made the primary solid from the bow and attached!

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Sadly, the fish ran beneath the boat and reduce off his line. Not being the kind to surrender, Max put us in place once more and Steve made his solid into the maelstrom and BAM!, he was on! quarter-hour later, because of one-to-one direct drive reels, Steve has first fly caught Pacific bluefin on the boat and preliminary scales present it would eclipse Colin’s file.

The remainder of the journey was your typical bluefin with some on bait and others on Flat-falls, together with some respectable nighttime fishing. However this journey will stick in all of our reminiscence banks for a really very long time. I can not suggest the Highliner any greater than the 5 stars it deserves. From Max and co-captain Mike Stroppel, to deckhands Matt Lee and Joseph Hernandez and Alex Perez, a ship chef that ought to get a Michelin star only for his boat bacon burgers, it can not get any higher.

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