A freight train on an ultralight

Three days after the last WDA, I decided to try my hand at wiper fishing.  For the uninitiated, which was me not too long ago, a wiper is a hybrid between a white bass and a striped bass.  They look an awful lot like a striper, though they tend not to grow as large, and the dark stripes down the fish's sides aren't all parallel.  On wipers, one or more tend to be broken along the length somewhere.  It must be a HOX gene expression defect in the hybrid, but I digress...

Like many hybrid species, wipers display heterosis, or what is more commonly known as hybrid vigor.  In this case, the wipers grow faster than either parental species and are voracious eaters.  They also put up a heck of a fight when hooked.  I found this last point out the hard way.

Being an idiot, I tied a Goture lead head swimbait to an ultralight rod and reel combo spooled with 4-lb test line and went wiper hunting.  Now, I'm not used to jig fishing, especially with something that weighs almost 0.8 oz, so every time the lure hit a rock on my first few retrieves, I thought I was getting ready for a hook up.  It even got hung up on a rock and thought that I'd hooked a big one for a second.

When a wiper finally did take my bait, there was no mistaking it.

That fish inhaled the lure and took off like a freight train!  I had my drag set pretty tight to begin with, but it was peeling off line like the bail was still open.  After a long run, with me panicking and probably acting like an idiot, the reel stopped smoking, I tightened it up a bit more, and started the battle.  I would reel in a little and try to pull the fish toward the surface, and the fish would either dive, zag in a different direction, or both.  And this went on, and on, and on.  With light line and ultralight tackle, I couldn't horse the fish in.  I had to play the waiting game and just try to tire it out without breaking my line.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, the fish finally surfaced, and it looked like a monster to me.  The wiper must not have liked the look of me, because he tried a few more escapes before I eventually got it close enough to the rocks to grab.  I wish I had a landing net.

Now, there's nothing in the above picture for scale, but this was a 114 oz (6.9 lb), 21 in long wiper - easily the biggest fish I've ever landed (including a dogfish that I hauled in pier fishing in Myrtle Beach many moons ago).  What a water donkey!

With shaking hands, as much from excitement as from fatigue, I tossed the wiper in my bucket and headed straight home to turn it into fish tacos.  Let's be honest; I also texted this picture to everyone I know ;-)