 Bill Hackney of Mooresville caught this 301/4-pound flathead catfish on light tackle at Lake Norman. The fish hit a small crankbait as Hackney and his wife, Joy, trolled Sunday from a pontoon boat. COURTESY OF BILL HACKNEY Sunday cruise action-packed It was to be just a leisurely, restful Sunday afternoon cruise on Lake Norman for Bill and Joy Hackney of Mooresville. It turned into quite something else. Acquaintances of Hackney know the avid angler absolutely cannot board a boat without taking fishing tackle along. Such was the case Sunday. "On the way out to the pontoon I grabbed two little ol' light spinning rods that cost $10 each," said Hackney. "I'd bought them for visitors to use at the pier. I figured we'd use them to troll a little bit." Joy, who Bill is teaching to fish, showed she is learning quickly by boating and releasing "seven or eight" largemouth bass weighing about 11/2 pounds each. Then, something much larger hit the crankbait on the rod Bill was holding. "When I set the hook, the rod almost bent double," he said. "I thought for sure the fish was going to break that cheap little rod in two - or break the 10-pound test line." After 30 minutes, he fought his quarry to the surface and brought it alongside the boat. "One look at it scared Joy," Hackney said. "She said it was the ugliest thing she'd ever seen and wanted no part of netting it. So I held the rod and the net myself and somehow managed to boat it." The Hackneys returned immediately to their dock to weigh the catch, a lunker flathead catfish. It pushed the needle on the scale to 30 pounds. "Joy is astonished there are fish that big in Lake Norman," said Bill. "Now, she's not so keen about going swimming when summer gets here." Tom Higgins Bluefin's strike was 'like dynamite blast' The electronic fish-finding device on Ned Ashby's Oregon Inlet-based sportfishing charter boat, Sea Breeze, didn't show a blip. "I wasn't getting a mark at all," skipper Ashby said Wednesday. "And then, all of a sudden ..." There was a stunning splash just behind the boat. "It was like someone had dropped a large car in the water," Ashby said with a chuckle. "No, it was bigger than that. It was like a dynamite blast." The cause of the splash 44 miles southeast of Oregon Inlet on the Outer Banks was the strike of a giant bluefin tuna, which had hit the flat line being trolled a few feet behind the stern. Ashby and his veteran mate, George Cecil, sprang into action, shouting instructions to their fishing party, a group of Virginians led by Cory Schultz of Waverly. The big bluefin took off with amazing speed. Bluefin generally are rated the world's fastest fish. "We already had caught and released some bluefin earlier in the day, including a 350-pounder and a couple 200 pounders," Ashby said. "But none of them matched this. This fish was pulling line so fast that it entered my mind it might (take all the line off the reel)." The fight waged on and on, reaching two hours. Ashby and Schultz agreed to max out the drag on the reel. Suddenly, the tuna popped to the surface. It had become tail-wrapped in the line and died, six miles from where the fight had started. "We weren't going to kill that fish," Ashby said. "Remember, we'd released those we caught earlier and we were going to free this one." The bluefin scaled an official 8051/2 pounds. Its length was 112 inches and the girth was 76. It's likely that Schultz's catch will be certified as a N.C. record, replacing a 744-pounder caught in 1995 by Thomas Baily. T.H. Tournament winners Travis Wehunt and Lance Willis of Lincolnton won the Norman Fishery Alliance's season finale striper tournament Sunday with a fish weighing 5.6 pounds. Gray Brookshire of Charlotte and Lincolnton's Keith Paysour finished second with a fish of 5.3. Sam Newman of Mooresville took third with a catch of 5.2 pounds. ================================================ Fishing reduces stress and gives you a break from our modern world where everything is going a million miles per hour 73 Check & Clear 6 LOC: 38-54-14.60N / 097-14-09.07W |
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