I was invited to go on a friend's newly acquired 30 or so footer boat last minute, so I couldn't bring my gear. By the time we got out on the water, it was near 10PM. The tide was rolling in and it was pretty choppy. I was horrified to find rods equipped with 20 lb. mono and these tiny circle hooks that wouldn't be able to hold the mackerel chunks that my friends had bought as bait for more than a couple of minutes.
Oh well. I made it work. We went 20-30 minutes out from Weymouth, a little past the islands. I threw out a mack head rigged through the eyes. After 5 minutes, I damn near lost my rod, I got hit so hard. I fought the fish for ten minutes or so, thankfully it was swimming towards me. Turned out to be a 34+ bluefish. I would have taken a photo but my phone needed to be used for emergency calls and since we were out in the middle of the water, it kept searching for a signal, thus killing the battery. More on that later.
That was the only hit of the night. From here on, it all went downstream. Literally.
We decided to hit another part of the water, and realized we had no idea where we were. It was pitch black and the navigation decided to crap out. The waves started getting really, really huge and at one point came over the side of the boat, flooding the engine.
Huge problem.
We finally got it started again after 30 minutes, just to have it crap out after 5 minutes. Another 40 minutes later, and it starts for a couple minutes tops and then craps out again. Now it won't start at all or even make a noise. The tide is supposed to be slack at this point, but the wind and current are sending us quickly towards an island. We almost hit a bunch of rocks and a pier, barely missing them, and ended up beached on George's Island.
We had to call the Coast Guard who came, but had to go back to base to get a bigger boat because the conditions were too rough for the one they had brought. They couldn't tow the boat because it was too dangerous for them, so they just took us back to base in Hull. It was nearly 6AM at this point. No cabs would take us back to our cars in Weymouth so we had to wait another half hour for someone's brother to pick us up.
All said and done, I walked back into my house at 8:30 AM, with a big bluefish, and red raccoon eyes. Thankfully we didn't die.