Jigging for deep thugs

We approached the Tweed Bar at a fast idle in the pre-dawn light and Kevin had a good look at the waves that were being pushed into steep peaks by the strong outgoing tide. We were going out to the 50-fathom reefs for a morning’s jigging.

The run took us about 25 minutes in the big Cat and then Kev slowed down and started to concentrate on his GPS and sounder. I pulled the two Saltiga jigging rods out and rigged them with 400g Chaos Jigs.

“Check out the fish showing on the pinnacle,” Kev said. I looked at the sounder and saw a red ball hanging off the side of the rock and my heart started to race.

Kevin put the motors in neutral and we dropped the big jigs over the side and free-spooled them to the bottom. My 80lb braid went slack, indicating that I was down. I gave a few quick winds to get the jig moving and then cracked the rod up, a few more quick cranks to take up the slack and as I went to crack the rod up again, everything came to a dead stop.

The fish pulled me up against the gunwale and the rod loaded up with the tip almost touching the water. Kevin gave a grunt and I turned to see his rod also bent double...