Losing Weight

I once weighed in a five-fish limit on the James River that totaled a whopping 4.51 pounds. Another time, fishing as a co-angler in an Elite Series event on the notorious pig factory known as the California Delta, I brought three bass to the scales that cumulatively weighed 3 pounds. I know the shame and embarrassment and longing of wishing that fish could be a bit larger – or a whole lot larger.

But after my most recent trip to Panama, I’m here to praise the smaller specimens of every fish species. They’re often as hard-hitting and valiant as their larger cousins, just a bit underfed – and sometimes they’re a whole lot more fun to catch.

For what it’s worth, the big yellowfin tuna showed up to play this time. On our first full day on the water, my friend Greg Evers battled a 247-pound tuna for over two hours before conquering it. The next day, two petite ladies, Lisa Vicars and Tammi Hill teamed up to beat down a 180-pounder that weighed substantially more than either of them. Nineties and hundreds were readily available. None of them ever seem to give up.

Then on the third day, our boat hooked something bigger, faster, and meaner than anything we’d seen before. Greg was again on the boat with me, and the four of us anglers traded off turns, 20 or 30 minutes at a time. We could see the fish on the graph below the boat – torturing us, offering up the middle fin. He’d be 170 feet deep, we’d gain 20 or so back, and then he’d dive down even further. Over the course of the battle, we had this fish up to the wind-on leader three times but never close enough to get a good shot with a gaff. It sucked. It became personal. The last time we got him close, he got a whiff of the boat and dove down again, all the way to 220 feet, in a matter of seconds.

I knew that the longer the fight progressed, the more our chances of landing him diminished, so when the hook pulled after three and a half hours, I was crushed but not surprised. We had a two-hour drive back to the lodge (fortunately he’d dragged us 5 miles in the right direction). None of us said a word. We just retreated to separate corners and drove home.

I’ve lost tournament-winning fish. I’ve lost double-digit bass. But I’ve never lost a fish that I fought for even a fraction of that time. We had so much invested in that one SOB, that’s what made it hurt so much. It still hurts. I want to know what that big beast weighed. I want to taste some steaks and poke from our victory that wasn’t meant to be.

The next day – our final day in Panama – we went a different direction and came into massive schools of yellowfins, mostly in the 10- to 30-pound range. I caught them on bass tackle, a travel swimbait rod from Megabass, and we put 61 in the boat by 1 pm, when we decided to chase grouper and then mahi. It was a blast because a 20-pound tuna makes a topwater strike as big as a 100-pound anything else. It was actually more fun than chasing the big ones – you got the benefit of the incredible blowups, followed by a quick fight, and then another explosion. I suppose that I’m fortunate to have done both on the same trip. It’s nice to brag about numbers, but it’s also nice not to have regrets and a sore back.