Probably the luckiest and most amazing thing happened today. Out at the Ridge trolling for Bonito and fish like that. We have a way back spreader bar in the center rigger connected to a Tiagra 30w on a Tallus rod...about an $800-$900 setup with the line, spreader bar, etc. Fish hits the bar. Center rigger clip doesn't release. It was like slow motion watching that rod shoot out of the holder and into the water. After a lot of swearing and a moment of disbelief, we composed ourselves and took action. I marked the spot on the GPS, then put 3 bunker snags out with heavy sinkers to maybe give us a chance at getting it back. Trolled really slow around the mark and over our tracks for about 2 hours. Longest 2 hours of our lives...just sitting and zig zagging over our track. Other boats must have thought we had a huge fish on since we had the spreaders hanging off the outriggers. Then one rod bends over...could it be? Dad reels it in very gently and we see color. Oh no...we snagged a fish. But wait, that's a bonito! And that's our purple spreader bar!!!! Pull in all the line and there she is. Man I have never been so glad to see one of our rods. What a relief.

Shut the engines off, and sat back and had a sandwich after rinsing the rod/reel with freshwater and bleeding the bonito.

Back on the troll and got 5 more bonito and 2 blues. Didn't care one bit about the fish...just the fact that we got our rod back!!! Great ride in at 34 knots!!