[howarda780]

Jon Devin, Eric (In Pursuit) and I made our long scheduled trip to Gloucester for Giants. We have fished with Dave Carraro for the past (2) years for cod, haddock and pollack and had limit catches.

Left the dock promptly at 4AM and headed out. Had some heavy rain and a little snotty on the way out to the grounds.

Set out a couple of lines and while Dave was giving us a lesson on what was going to happen, we hooked up. Eric fought the fish for almost an hour before the line had gill rubbed and he broke off at the boat on the surface. Approx weight 350-450.

We get back to the ball and 10 minutes later, Paul (the mate) says" get ready" boom! There it goes off again, this time peeling out all the mono and 3/4 of the backing off the spool. Dave stopped him initially and got back almost all of the backing. We took turns on the rod for the next hour and Dave finally harpooned the massive beast at 1.5 hrs. The fish is estimated at approx 900lbs. 110" long. The biggest fish on Tuna.com this year.

It was a true team effort, taking turns on the fish, running the boat, clearing the lines, etc. Paul took approix 45 mins to an hour to head, gut, and ice the fish down. We got him back to the dock and a crane lifted her into a box truck. We just received a note from Dave saying the fish was in transit to Japan.

We fished in a large group of boats and there was only one or two fish caught. We had the one on the surface and the one that we caught. Dave runs an extremely tight operation. Everything was stellar!

My pics to follow and I am sure Eric and Jon will post some as well. If you want to go tuna or ground fishing, here is the boat to go on. We had an excellent time.