The summer of 1999 was very hot and dry. Here in Virginia we were experiencing another drought. I could not wait to seek refuge from the heat in the cool waters of Monomoy Island as I have been doing every summer for the past seven years. Little did I know that the Cape was suffering from unseasonable heat as well. The waters of Monomoy were warmer than past summers at this time, and the stripers did not appear to be as abundant or as hungry either.

The silver lining of my predicament was that the ocean temperatures were also considerably warmer. There had been reports of fishermen catching mahi mahi very close to Nantucket. While guiding anglers to ocean stripers, Capt. Jeff Walther witnessed large schools of bluefin tuna busting schools of pogies and sand eels.

Two days later on a busman's holiday, Jeff, George Ryan and another angler steamed nine miles off the beach to where the tuna had previously been feeding. When the tide became slack, the fish appeared and stayed up long enough for Jeff and his crew to hook six bluefins and bring two the the boat to be safely released. One fish was caught on spinning gear, and Jeff broke his eleven weight in the process of landing his 100 plus pounder. After hearing about Jeff's triumph, Captain Rich Benson and I began to plan our adventure.It looked as though the weather was going to cooperate.

My wife would be coming up to the Cape the following day, and she agreed to bring my twelve weight and my Penn International #4. As soon as she arrived I assembled my gear for the next day. My leader consisted of a nine foot section of Mason 30 pound Hard Mono, and at the end of my terminal tackle I tied on a new creation that I had tied the previous day.

7:00 a.m. could not come soon enough. Anxiously the three of us traveled due east of the cut between North and South Monomoy Islands.A three foot swell hindered our speed somewhat, but the winds were low and the sun was high.

Seven miles out sea chickens skimmed just above the surface of the ocean. When we hit nine miles, whales could be seen in all directions as they made their blowing noise or let their enormous flukes wave as they porpoised all around us. I must admit that a forty foot whale only a short cast from Rich's eighteen foot Hewes had me somewhat unnerved. There were no signs of tuna, so we steamed ahead.

At thirteen miles we found the commercial tuna fleet. The tide seemed to be letting up, and small pods of fish began to bust schools of bait. They remained out of our range however. They behaved in this manner for close to two hours. Tuna would come up, we would go to them, and they would disappear. Then to rub it in one fish would explode right next to us only to vanish into the depths.

Our nerves were becoming frazzled, and just when I began to wonder whether or not we should head back to the flats for stripers, the motherload of bluefins erupted into a frenzy of sandeels. They stayed up as we positioned the boat up current of their path. I had only one shot, and these fish were behaving just like false albacore, only they were much larger. Sixty feet from the head of the school I made my cast. On the second strip, the line came tight, and what felt like a Volkswagen Beetle was melting my backing from my reel at an alarming rate. Rich cranked up the engine, and the fight was on!

For an hour and a half the tuna and I played tug of war while Rich kept his boat at the best position to maintain the upper hand. Near the end of my battle the tuna would come so close, then it would take two hundred yards of backing without any trouble. Finally the fish came to the boat, and Rich slipped a rope around it's tail.

Talk about ecstatic! Like two giddy school girls, we brought the 100 pounder into the flats boat to be measured, photographed and released. This was undoubtedly the high point of both Rich's and my fishing experiences. Rich coined my fly as Tom's Tuna Tickler.

While designing this fly, I wanted it to cast well and shine from within. I chose Kinky Fibre and a myriad of flashes to accomplish this task. Following is a recipe and tying instructions for the fly.