Meatlines...ahh the memories I have!

One of the first times I ever fished PD with my dad about 20+ years ago, we were moochers back then. We didn't know diddly from a dogfish or how to hook either really. Always caught a lot of cod and a lot of dogfish. I remember this story like it was almost yesterday.

One morning right down in front of Owens beach up close in about 125' of water on a beatiful warm and calm morning we noticed a guy had a really nice fish on his meatline and it was really giving him some trouble right up on top. The guy was in what looked to be about a 24' boat with meatlines off of both sides mounted on 12" meatline holders.

Anyway, this fish is really nice, 25+ and splashing all around this guys boat about 10' from the net. The guy keeps cranking and the fish kept splashing in a tug of war and then in a single instant, the fish, the meatline, and the glory were pulled to the depths of the sound as the meatline holder became disconneted from the boat as in it BROKE OFF the boat!!! Took less than a second for everything to disappear, unbelieveable, I still can't believe the look on that guy's face! Poor b******d, he was simply dumbfounded! As was everyone else within 50 yards!

So my dad and I continued to fish PD as moochers for next 2-3 years. We would stop by the boathouse and check out the derby board, talk to the old timers and try to pick up some tips on what we were doing wrong. Back then the derby board usually had a high 20's or low 30's fish in the top 5 places and frequently it was these old timers on top with thier meatline caught hogs. They were trolling out in front of the Clay Banks in 200+ feet of water on the bottom with big plugs. Some used flasher/hoochie combo's but mainly it was 6" white plugs.

So me and my dad decided that we need to get a meatline and try it out, it appeared to be the hot ticket. So we got one, mounted it on my dad's 12' Livingston with the cockpit style seats, one in front of the other and headed off to PD from Fox Island where my dad lived. It was like August, late afternoon/early evening and we decided to fish the wall right at the point on a good outgoing rip. So we rigged a blue/green hoochie with red hot spot and dropped her down to 120 '. Man, it wasn't 2 minutes and we had some hard shaking on the end of the meatline, a nice chrome 18 pounder as it turned out! Whoo Hoo, we're stoked! This meatlining is easy! Well, it has it's moments anyway.

We'll as time went by, we upgraded to a 14' tiderunner center console walkaround style boat and I convinced my dad to try one of those new electric downriggers. Bought a a Canon mini-troll(should have bought the Canadian brand, fool) and never have fished with the meatline again. Ever. My dad's gone, but I still have the meatline, damn, some good memories there!

But I'd recommend a downrigger, way more fun to fight a 20+ pounder with little to no weight/resistance on the line than cranking them in on a meatline. You want food, go meatline. You want sport, go 'rigger.