The once ubiquitous ‘long drop’ may be a thing of the past, but the ‘deep drop’ has recently come into a league of its own.
Fishing the depths with my brother-in-law, we were confronted by a potential problem: a knot in the line. Commonsense would suggest it might be prudent to address the situation on account of the fact that Murphy loves opportunities like these—a knot equals a weak spot, which would invariably attract a monster fish to the bait, resulting in a brief but explosive fight and bust-off. Possibly.
Electing to get to the bottom of this—or rather, the middle—we had to cruise out to 400m so we could pay out enough line in order to untangle the knot. Always an opportunist, I made sure the terminal or business end was baited—well, you just never know—and let out line.
“Imagine if we lucked onto a groper hole!” I joked to bro’-in-law.
Well, we didn’t. Luck onto a groper hole, that is.
The rod gave a mighty thump and bend though and we were in for one hell of a stoush. Eventually, colour spiralled toward the surface and we we rewarded with a magnificent bluenose of 30kg!
Having marked the spot, we set up a few more drifts and ultimately came away with four nice fish to share with friends and family.
It was a bit of a long ‘drop’ but it paid off.
