Biggest Fish in Years

What started out as a slow day ended with a monster fish.  Tonight I landed a huge striper of 46 inches after dark on this rainy and stormy night.  This fish  was probably my biggest fish in over a decade.  I suspect it was in the 40+ pound range.
The day did not start off well.  I had all the right conditions in Gansett with a stiff northeast wind and rough water, but very few fish.  I was only able to catch one schoolie in the daylight and I tried in a lot of places.  My luck changed after dark as I found a spot that had some schoolies and I quickly landed 5 fish.  Then the big fish blew up on my jointed Red Fin swimmer. It proved to be quite a struggle to land this fish in rough water and the fish pulled out a lot of line from my Van Staal 150 reel.  Fortunately the new VMC trebles I put on the plug recently held, and I got the brute ashore.  A quick measurement with my tape and she was released to fight again.  I have no pictures of the fish since I left the camera in the car figuring I wasn't going to catch anything.  Boy, was I wrong!