The Jim McCarthy
"Evening Secret"
Fishing Contest Champion Page!
Congratulations
Jim McCarthy, You Have Won $200 And
The First Ever "Evening Secret" Fishing Contest (6/30/2005)!
Click
here to immediately see the Evening Secret fishing contest rules.
Jim
McCarthy's first email to me about the fish on the left in above picture:
"Daniel,
The attached pictures show a little bit of my success using the "Evening
Secret" the first time. The attached pictures are of a Striped
Bass I caught the first evening. I was fishing at 1 am near the mouth
of the Merrimac river, in Massachusetts, from a boat while we were anchored
with the "evening Secret" rigged in the bow of the boat. I
had already caught four fish 18-20 pounds (which makes this the most
successfull trip I have ever had at this time of the year) when something
hit my port side line. I had a light to medium action 7' spinning outfit
with 25 pound test line. This fish just took off and started peeling
line off. When I picked the rod up it was bent almost double (glad it
was a ugly stick or it might have broken). At first I thought it was
a shark because it made no hint of stopping. I tightened the drag on
three separate occasions because it looked like it would "spool
me" anyway. Finally it stopped peeling line and just stopped. For
at least a minute I could not move it. I thought the fish had snagged
something on the bottom. When my wife shined a flashlight on my reel
I saw I had about 50 yards of line left on the spool (I could see the
bottom of the spool in a few places. This means the fish had 200 yards
of line out. Finally by keeping the rod bent in a large U I was able
to begin reeling line in. Three more times after that this fish got
a "second wind" and started peeling 10-20 yards off the line
at the newer, much, higher drag setting. It took me almost 40 minutes
to get the fish to the boat. This fish was 43 inches long and weighed
35 pounds. To put the fish into perspecitve I am 260 pounds and 6'6"
tall. You can see it had not been feeding much yet (it is an rriving
spring run fish) but it was very healthy and strong. It would probably
weigh 6-8 pounds more in a few weeks after feeding heavily on herring
and other bait fish. Later in the evening I caught 3 more fish of equal
size which I wanted to release so I was not able to weigh and photograph
them. Also I had one additional fish on that I could not turn, peeled
most of my line off and eventually lost (the monster that got away!).
Needless to say this was one of the best nights I have had in 49 years
of fishing!!
Thank you,
Jim McCarthy"
Jim
McCarthy's second email to me about the fish on the right in above picture:
"Dan,
Had to tell you about what has been going on for me over the last few
days. I am attaching a few more pictures. The first is another monster
of 43" and 28 pounds, the second shows the Evening Secret and the
third is a 46" fish that weighed 38 pounds. We did not get to take
the picture until the next morning because the batteries ran out on
the camera. But thats not all! we caught 12 more fish during the same
evening all of them keepers (larger than 28"). The largest was
49" but since we already had some we let all the rest go and did
not weigh them but just measured lengths to give them the best chance
for survival.. We caught 4 over 40", 6 over 36" and the rest
between 30-34"!! Can't wait to get out tonight.
Jim McCarthy"
Jim
McCarthy's third email to me about the winning fish in the middle:
"Dan,
The secret has done it again! My son and I left at 2:00 am to make sure
we would arrive at our favorite anchor spot before dawn. We were not
there more then 35-40 minutes when we caught the two fish on the attached
photos plus a 1/2 doz more! All were huge fish. We were catching live
mackeral and using them for bait. The largest fish on the left is 49"-40lbs.
the one on the right my son is holding is 44" and 33lbs. We have
fished this same area a dozen times in the day and caught many "schoolies"
around 20-28" but never fish this big.
Thanks again for the evening secret.
Jim McCarthy"
Click Here To Get The "Evening
Secret" Now!
