Sometimes your best fishing nights come when you don't expect it. I had the opportunity to fish tonight right after work, which is a change from the late night fishing sessions I'm normally use too. I also had the oppotunity to fish with Joe aka "Jaws" for the first time. He hooked me up with his awesome homemade cannon ball rigs. After sending out my baits Jaws and I are talking and I see my rod going into the water. After a mad dash to grab the rod I reel in this little 28" bat.
After examing why my rod took a swim I realize the sand was really soft and my rod holder just got pulled over. I am pretty sure the reel was in free spool with just the clicker on but I guess there was enough drag to pull over the rod. After changing my wet socks and paints I rebait with a nice mac head and send it out again. No more then 5 minutes later I get a nice run on the same rod and reel combo. This time I'm thinking this fish has a little more weight on it but not much since it's coming in pretty easily. Little did I realize this big girl was just swimming towards me. Once she saw the shore she took off down the shore. Thank goodness that Joe was there he cleared all the lines from the water. Everytime this fish got close to shore she would just peel line off my reel at will. After a good 15-20min tug-of-war she starts to tire out and I'm able to lift her off the bottom. Joe grabs her and she sprays water all over him. I was shocked at her size when Joe brought her up the sand by far this was the biggest bat I had the opportunity to land. After a quick measure she taped out at 54" and she was supper pregnant. I wanted to get a sense of her weight and she was easly over 150lbs.
It was awesome to beat my PB and break into the 50" club. Thanks again Joe for all the help and rigs, I'll be your deckhand next time.
