By: Chasten Whitfield
It is finally the New Year and we began our morning not too early, just looking for a few whitebaits to throw the net on in about 4 foot of water to catch a few. Although we did grab a few it certainly wasn’t enough to stuff the live well, so we went out on the beach to check out the crab trap buoys. Between the two stops, we’ll have enough bait to use for today. At our first stop, we could see a few juvenile tripletail and cast on them and try to catch them as it’s just fun to do. The wind began to pick up a little bit so we headed over to the south side still checking out the buoys, but only stopping on the fish that seem to be a better size due to the conditions getting rougher. It’s funny with tripletail, as sometimes you think they are so dumb and others are so smart. We came up on a crab trap buoy and we could see this black shadow hanging out on this buoy. My best friend Aaliyah and I both grabbed a rod already baited and took turns pitching to this dinosaur! The way we were facing, neither one of us could see the fish, but our other friend Justin was in the tower guiding us as he could see the fish from his vantage point, and which way this fish was heading. We both just stood in anticipation, neither one of us thinking we have this fish on when suddenly Aaliyah pulls her line so gently and felt the tension on the line and she knew she got this fish hooked up! I knew this fish was big, so while she was reeling I grabbed the net knowing we’re going to need it to get this fish onboard. Each time this triple tail got a glimpse of the boat he would head back down giving Aaliyah a pretty good workout. Finally, he came up close enough to the boat where I slipped his head directly into the net landing this big dinosaur. Check out the video on my YouTube using the following link https://youtu.be/4dBqD0MDAfM
