A fair scratch today ultimately dropping our guard a bit in favor of bites over odds catching. And it worked fine. Before switching over though we had a couple of strong reinforcements for the idea of sticking with the big gear even when bites are few to come. Long range veteran and Royal Star friend Mark Clark got the job done on this insanely spirited 185 that dumped his Makira in about thirty seconds then took about half our backup after that. A grueling forty five minutes later the 130 fluorocarbon paid big dividends when this mean as hell bastard came over the rail. Switching gears tomorrow after two full, long days of slow scratching in the big fish arena north is the call in favor of more bites, a faster pace, and the coveted Fall variety.