Dropping Props Like it's Hot

Sometimes life experiences stick with you, making it impossible to do something without recalling a past moment. This is one of those stories.

The year was 2008, and I was a junior in high school. My life revolved around two things: skipping class to chase a hot topwater striper bite and pulling myself together to chase girls at night. What a life.

That October, a late-season eddy broke off from the Gulf Stream and settled on Fish Tails Canyon. Reports were buzzing with massive life, and with a weather window closing, I jumped at the chance to join a friend on his 54' Sportfish for the last shot of the season.

We left Point Judith, RI, on an early October morning, cruising at 28 knots towards our destination, roughly 95 miles south. By 0700, we arrived to find an empty ocean. Doubt set in immediately. Where was everyone? We'd heard of Bigeye, Big Blues, and plenty of mid-size yellowfin. Did we miss it? The water looked right, so we put out the spread.

Minutes turned to hours, and the bite was nonexistent. Boredom was setting in, and just as we were about to move, it happened. One, two, three, four rods went down. We were tight!

Chaos ensued. We cleared the rods and tried to settle in, but with boredom comes complacency. Harnesses were still stowed, swapped lures were scattered around, and the cockpit was a mess. Needless to say, the captain was yelling from the flybridge.

Thirty minutes later, four 75-pound yellowfin tuna were flopping on deck. We were on the board and ready to set up again. I quickly deployed the first spreader bar off the stern, and before I could return the drag to strike, we were hooked up again. The crew frantically began deploying other rods, and within 30 seconds, we were doubled up on a pair of Longfins (Albacore, a.k.a. Penguins).

Anyone who's been covered up on longfins knows they fight like hell, rolling in packs and leveraging their long fins to stay down longer. It’s common to find a pack of longfins and continuously get bit. That’s what happened to us—a potential strikeout turned into a 20-plus fish day of longfins with some nice yellowfin mixed in.

With the crew thoroughly exhausted from the all-out slugfest, it was time to hit the high fliers for some Mahi Mahi. We quickly found large pods of gaffer-sized Mahi willing to come right to the boat. We hopped from high flyer to high flyer, cherry-picking the biggest Mahi from the micro-bio mass living under them. Then it happened.

As I stood in the cockpit corner, bail open on my spinning reel ready to cast a chunk of squid towards the next high flyer, I felt a terrible shudder. The engine revved, the boat shook, and a load of profanity spewed from the flybridge. Urgency gripped the cockpit. The captain jumped down the ladder and threw open the engine room door. More profanity. Out came the goggles, and into the water he went. The port prop was gone, the prop shaft sheared just inches from the box.

What happened? A 300' floating line had been affixed to the high flyer we were approaching. By the time the skipper had noticed the streamer, it was too late, the line was wrapped. He threw the pins back in an attempt to avoid the hazard, shearing the shaft. That summer, many sporties used high flyers as pseudo anchors in 1000'+ water. The owners of the gear didn’t appreciate it and booby-trapped high flyers with floating lines. We were tired, and angry.

Twenty hours later, we arrived back at Point Judith, loaded with fish, short a very expensive propeller, and with one heck of a story to tell. Teenage me learned valuable lessons that day. First, even when fishing seems bleak, it can turn in an instant. Second, and most importantly, always approach high flyers from upstream and watch for floating lines. Every time I fish a flyer, I think of that day.