Striper rodeo

Continued from page 1 made a cast into open water that was immediately met by a bone-crushing strike.”

The fish began to take them for a ride, literally.

“The fish was rapidly peeling line off of Polly’s reel, so he tightened down the drag as much as he could, which resulted in the fish dragging the boat in the direction it was swimming,” Koulianos explained. “We still weren’t sure what he had hooked into, as it hauled the boat out of the open water and toward the bank.”

After running into the shallows and dragging the boat alongside the bank with it, the fish began to swim toward every piece of structure that it could find.

“My reel only had 12-pound test line on it, and there were several times I thought I might lose the fish,” Polly said. “The fish began to get my line and itself tangled up in some large, shallow rocks as it zigzagged along the bank.”

Recognizing that Polly’s line might break from the rocks, Koulianos bailed out of the boat and began to sprint down the bank with a landing net in the direction the fish had been swimming.

“The boat was now aground on some sort of structure along the bank, so Polly got out of the boat as well and kept the line tight while trying to walk my direction,” Koulianos said.

The two anglers frantically tried to figure out how to land the fish that was thrashing back and forth among shallow rocks that might break Polly’s line at any second. Then they realized the fish had gotten the line so entangled in the rocks that it was unable to swim much farther. Koulianos saw that it was wedged between some rocks to his immediate left, and was able to scoop it up in his landing net.

“We got the striper back to the boat and were able to weigh and measure it quickly,” Polly said. “Then we snapped a few photos, and took some time to revive it, before it swam off safely back to the depths.”

Koulianos had given Polly a segment of 25-pound test fluorocarbon leader to tie onto his line before they began fishing that evening. Both anglers felt had the leader not been there, the fish would have broken the line.

This was the first fishing trip that Koulianos and Polly had made together.

“We had crossed paths out at the lake while fishing, and realized we had some mutual friends,” said Koulianos. “So we decided to plan a trip together, and sure enough, it turned out to be one for the memory books.”