Captain Mike Costello ( left ) holds his client's 47 pound striper!
Captain Mike Costello guided his client to a monster striper, recently. Here is his story, as posted on
Dan Blanton's forum:
" The Fishing Gods were smiling...
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of fishing with two of my regular clients who definitely have the "fish gods" on their side. Jeff Sasaki and Garrett Kubota have had some incredible trips with me over the last several years, including a day last October when they landed 92 stripers between 4 and 10 lbs. all on intermediate lines with the same two rattle Clousers.
Once again we had an amazing "Delta Experience" as we started off the day by passing numerous boats on the way up to our fishing grounds. After retrieving a seven inch, black over chartreuse rattle Clouser from a tree in which my client two days before had lost it in, we were ready to get down to business. I attached the weathered fly to Garrett's leader and he responded by saying that the fly had been observing fish all night long ,and now it had picked out the striper it wanted to catch. To sum it up, the grab was violent, the great fish peeled off around 75 yards of line, and we were very lucky to land and photograph such a remarkable fish. I probably should add that Garrett and had some bad luck on landing big linesiders lately, but that has definitely changed now. The end result was a gorgeous 49 inch fish that had an incredible 31 inch girth, and on my sixty pound boga grip it weighed an astounding 47 lbs.
We caught the fish on an intermediate line in shallow water with 20 lb. tippet, and we carefully released this awesome specimen back into the Delta so that another angler might possibly share the same experience. Congratulations to Garrett and a once in lifetime fish! "
Mike Costello
A little over a year ago, I had the pleasure of landing one nearly as large (45" ) for my friend, Mike Baisdon and witnessing another monster ( 46" ) landed 20 minutes later, 200 yards farther down the slough. We were not able to weigh either fish as Mike had only a 30 pound Boga Grip that bottomed out!
