From The Hull Truth Boating Forum

Trolling early on Saturday morning at 12 mile bank and then something smacks the short corner rod set up right behind the strip dredge, peels off 20′ of line then drops it. The fish comes back after we drop the bait back and takes off straight for the bottom 2000′ below, then proceeds to peel off 7/8 of the 40 lb line on the Penn 30TW in the time it takes to clear the rest of the lines and get the fighting belt strapped onto the angler (who is slowly backing off the drag as line is going out). Not one jump, just immediately sounded.

At this point we are thinking it is a big for the area yellowfin 100 lb plus there were some larger tuna jumping in the area. The fish then makes a turn towards the surface and comes unbuttoned. There would have been a bit of a bow in the line with that much mono out, and the terminal gear was a 24oz trolling lead, 20′ shock leader, and a ballyhoo and ilander (cayman crusher rig with 9/0 mustads) on #11 wire. Angler completely dejected, I volunteer to crank in the 400 yes of mono and lead. That’s when things got weird, when I pull the lead ballyhoo out of the water it is completely clean and untouched, not even a tooth mark on it, and the 480# cable behind the lead is coiled up like a slinky.

The lead would have been 10′ behind the dredge, so we were thinking a blue came up in the spread pretty fired up then smacked the trolling lead and somehow becomes bill-wrapped. Here is a pic of the trolling lead after the events. Anyone ever heard of something similar or have any other ideas?

For more on this story go to:

http://www.thehulltruth.com/sportfishing-charters-forum/545047-almost-got-spooled-cayman-what.html