Martha's Vineyard - September 1, 2011

Went to the Little Bridge ~9pm, at the end of the falling tide. I ended up catching three nice stripers, two in the mid-20"s and one in the solid mid-30"s, the biggest striper that I've ever caught on a fly rod. The mid-30" was the last one caught. I was fishing the inside of the bridge. When the big fish hit the fly, it immediate took off like a lightning bolt to the other side of the bridge and halfway down jetty, stripping line of the reel at will. At one point, it actually burned my hand when it was stripping the line! Given the slight current going out and the strength of the fish, I knew that it wouldn't be easy getting back to my side of the bridge, so I crawled under to get on the fish's side of the bridge. Thankfully, it was low tide, otherwise I would have been screwed. I ended up fighting the fish for quite a while longer, basically at a stalemate. Then, I decided to move further down the channel and after about 10+ more minutes, I finally landed the fish. What an absolute beauty! After hooting and hollering for a bit (of course, I was the only one who could hear, since there was no one around), I gave the fish a kiss and let another keeper go. Good luck, MyBiggestFishOnAFlyRodToDate.