Small Reel, Big Fish

Bruce Smith's Shogun Report

"It was a good day of fishing September 25. In fact, I might be downplaying it; it was better than good. We landed over 100 big, beautiful, quality yellowfin tuna (25 to 80 pounds, only a smattering of these tunas were below the 50-pound mark), a dozen nice dorado, seven wahoo, and nine big yellowtail. The morning started with a bang. If you were listening to XX 1090 in the morning, you heard Randy the Cook giving an up to the minute report. I sent him to the bridge to call in, due to the rest of the crew keeping up the hustle of gaffing, untangling lines and stapling.
 
The Redondo boys kept up the pace until about 10:00 when the fish backed off and throughout the afternoon it was one here, one there, the occasional wahoo. At 16:00 the bite went WFO again, 70-pounders doing back flips out the water, cast your sardine in, let it swim 50 feet and put it in gear. Again Team Redondo was clicking, one of the great things about getting passengers of this quality, together, is watching them work together landing good grade fish. Seeing them pick out the right baits, getting it into the water and hooking fish, fighting the fish, staying in front of it, and getting out of tangles before they get into them. Using their peripheral vision and looking down the rail for potential hazards instead of just watching what their fish is doing, i.e. tunnel vision.

It was a tough decision to come all this way for a six-day trip, but it has paid off for us in good quality and biting fish. The only thing I regret is not being able to stay another day. We were sitting on a darn good spot.

Accurate BX2 500 and BX2 600 N or NN are the go-to reels right now. Do yourself a favor and get a small two speed reel. Right now we are catching 50 to 100-pound yellowfin tuna. This is the time of year that the small reel, big fish mantra lives up to it full meaning. Everyday that we are on the grounds I see and hear, "I could really use a two-speed right now," from the guys who are still using Trinidads and Saltists.
 
Yesterday, I cast a sardine on a short top shot of 60-pound Blackwater fluorocarbon, a Mustad Sea Demon 5/0 (3X strong), a Seeker Hercules SHS 60XH and an Accurate BX2 600. The sardine didn't make it very far before a 70-pound-plus yellowfin ate it. This was the first real test to put the screws to the Hercules, and as I have stated in the past articles, this rod came through pulling hard, not bottoming out and at times was bent into an upside down U. In the future I am looking forward to putting the same outfit through the ringer on some triple digit fish. Someone has to do this Ramp work. I'm here for you all (my dry attempt at humor).

Report from FishingVideos.com

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