Father's Day Fifty

by Wade Colli

My father, Keith Colli was up visiting me in Boston for Fathers Day.  It was the first trip of the year for my dad, and it was a memorable one.  We started the day at 6:00 am with school-size striped bass feeding on top off of Thompson Island.  The first fish was landed within 10 minutes of leaving port at Marina Bay, and on light tackle gear it seemed like a 50 pounder to my father, who is used to catching 12-inch brown trout on his local lake in Connecticut.

After chasing the schools for about 45 minutes, we decided to head out to the ledges in an effort to catch some mackerel before the tide completely died.  We found a slow pick of fish and put about a dozen mackerel in the livewell.

With some bait in the well and the tide dying, we picked up and ran to Deer Island flats to kill the slack with some flounder fishing. We picked up a couple of fish for dinner and  as the tide turned, we changed our sights back to stripers and headed to Hull.

On the second drift, we put the macks down and I could see my father trying to figure out how to keep the egg sinker rig near the bottom, continually letting out the line to ensure that the bait stayed low.  I saw the rod tip stat to bend and my first instinct was that he had caught the bait on the kelp that lay below, but boy was I wrong.  After two short tugs on the line, I immediately saw the line start to zing. FISH ON!

As he fought the fish, I could see he was still losing drag and I tried to help him tighten it, but then realized that the reel was already pegged with about 18 pounds of drag and the fish wasn’t slowing a bit.  At this point we both realized that we had something special on the end of the line.  After about 5 minutes, the fish came to the surface about 5 yards from the boat and we saw the massive tail slash the water.

At this point a number of questions were running through my head: “Did I tie the knot correct?” “Is there enough leader?” “Did I check for frays?”

Luckily the man on the rod had taught me well over the years and the connection held.  After another 5 minutes we finally got the fish to the boat and into the net.  As the fish came over the side we both looked at each other with euphoria. My father got me into fishing and boating at a young age, and I couldn’t have asked for a better Father’s Day than to put him on the biggest fish of his life. The fish was weighed in at Fore River Tackle in Quincy. Unfortunately for the first time in 4 years, I was not entered into the Striper Cup, but my application is now in the mail. Hopefully,  I’ll run into this guy’s big brother.