>>1977576We were trolling fast, and I had just dipped my rod to create a pause, and it was like I had snagged a boat going 5 knots in the other direction. My buddy thought there was no way it was a fish because of how immediate and consistent the drag was going out, but I knew better and had killed the trolling motor. Once it started to do anything other than just pull straight out the back, all I could do was yell, "I told you it was a fish! The line was running out faster than we were going forward and trees don't swim!"
It effortlessly pulled 50+ yards of drag before I turned it's head the first time, and when I got it to within sight of the boat, it ran and pulled out almost everything I had, and quick, less than 2 minutes, too. At hookup, it didn't really fight so much as just go about it's business in a way I felt almost powerless to stop, but once it saw the boat, it pulled almost all of my mainline off that rod, I could see the backing on the spool, and I only put 15 feet of backing on a spool when I spool it up, I had 150 yards of the 40 lb mainline, and she took over 140 out on the run, even with me chasing her with the trolling motor and splashing water on my reel to keep the drag cool. I fought it back into view and it ran out almost a hundred yards on the second run, and ran a third time for almost 50 yards.
All in all the fight took almost 25 minutes, and she was ready for release after just 10 minutes of letting her catch her breath alongside the boat, and she swam away strongly after taking a swipe at my hand. She weighed 34 lbs 7 ounces, and was well longer than my 48 inch measure decal on the boat, but was probably a bit more than 60 inches.
By comparison, my best carp was 6 ounces lighter (34 lbs 1 oz) out of the same lake, but caught from shore in about 15 minutes using a reel with under 150 yards of 15 lb test. Still a great fight, but not even in the same class.
