jjoey312, Chickamauga, Striper, 03/09/15, Solo

[jjoey312]

Well to start with it brings me sadness to tell some of you rig haters that I caught this striper on your favorite lure...ha ha!!..oh well so much for stirring the pot as its been called in the past.... I had a few hours Monday before I had to be at work and thought I'd go & try to get the braid stretched...(or at least had hopes to).. Bass fishing was not so great with a lot of casting & only catching 4 or 5 marginally keeper bass...I caught this freight train before I had any of the bass & if I would have known this was going to be the peak of the trip I could have loaded up then... This fish was by far the hardest pulling fish that I have caught in a long time... to start with due to my drag coming loose on my Shimano Calcutta reel I've been cranking my drag down tight to keep it from coming loose...when this fish hit I knew I had a serious sized fish on the end of my line ....without turning this into a book... I managed to get my drag loosened up, fought the fish for every bit of 8-10 mins...finally netted it...set my camera on timer & snapped the pic.. I struggled to pick the fish up enough to fit it in the pic & you can see the tail is not in the pic...I'm not sure what it weighed but I can hold a 25lb weight straight out with one arm & have no problem....There was no way I could hold this fish out with one arm..I'm thinking every bit of 30-35 lb range...maybe I'm right...maybe wrong... I wanted another pic but I didn't want to take a chance on killing the fish just to take another picture...just feel privileged to catch a fish like this...

 

[EricM]

emoThumbsup emoThumbsup emoWorthy Fun, aren't they!

 

[bronzeback45]

That's as monster man, I missed out on the striper bite this past season. Those freight train runs our a blast! WTG Joey emoThumbsup .

 

[Red Bullet]

You are very close on the weight! Good catch.

 

[drumking]

I have caught hundreds, if not thousands of Stripers over the past 15+ years including 6 over 30 and 1 over 40 lbs. This fish definitely looks to be in the mid to high 30's to me. Great fish and congratulations on the fine catch. When you hook one, it feels like you have hooked into a greyhound bus. emoBigsmile emoGeezer

 

[tbinchrist]

Big stripers are hard to forget! What a great catch!!

 

[jason]

Definitely in the 30s...congrats! They are a blast to catch.

 

[hookem]

Nice catch

 

[Muskrat]

emoThumbsup emoThumbsup

 

[reeltime]

Awesome catch, can only imagine the fight it put up!

 

[cuonthelake]

emoWorthy emoApplause

 

[Gator]

Good work Joey. Thanks for the report and photo.

 

[VolsFan24]

Thats a monster! Thanks for posting.

 

[jjoey312]

Thanks everyone it really was a fish to remember....I had to do some quick backing off of the drag....I hope everyone gets to experience a fish pull like that never has...I hope the fish survived I seriously fought it for 7 - 9 minutes maybe more it was a blur.....that's even using 65lb braid... I got it back in the water as soon as I could & it swam around at the surface of the water for a couple mins but eventually dove down...

 

[jjoey312]

Oh yeah thanks everyone for helping me guess on the weight.....usually I don't really care that I don't have scales but that may be the biggest striper I've ever caught....if not it's the second biggest..

 

[foodsaver]

they pull the hardest of any fish in freshwater I think