Hi all, great to be out of the classroom and back onboard. Man and to go full steam into these freight trains of the sea. Just returned with the boys from yeehaa fishing tackle in Auckland and what a trip, First up steamed the 40+ miles to the grounds getting there around 10pm, started fishing on one of the big hoki trawlers ENTERPRIZE which is a kiwi boat with some great blokes that run it, of note last year our best nights fishing was from this boat with us tagging 5 and losing 2 so expectations were high as we pitched our first bait , and so on with no real action for the first hour or too. We were sounding tuna but they were staying deep too deep for the surface baits , steve rigged up a diver and on the next pass we were bit. Tony was on 130lb stand up tackle and did a great job nailing the fish est 280kg tagged and released in 15 min unreal time for a fish of that size . That was to set the stage for what happened next, another hour or so we hooked up on 130lb stand up tackle again and settled into the fight 1hr 2hrs 3hrs and so on never even seeing the trace till about the 6hr mark , but then the fish took off deep for another 100mtr run , with our angler on the ropes and not able to go on the boys decided for sum tag wrestling. with a fresh angler up we thought no worries, we will have the fish at the boat pronto not so. For the next 5 hours this fish wore the 4 of our group out all taking turns on the rod until 11 hours 10 mins after hooking up, did we get a shot of the trace. The call was to keep the bastard for eating since it had caused so much grief,and with the weather turning pear shaped and the boys nackerd the call was to head for westport weighing the fish in at 249kg. Goes to show that these fish cannot be under estimated 1 taking 15 mins and the next 15 hours , we have seen this a few times in the last couple of years were 2 fish of the same size can fight so different, you normally get a early shot of the trace, and if you miss that early shot she's a hard road with them really digging there toes in, hats off to the boys they did a great job and won in the end. Cheers til next time Lance