Hey guys,
I've been friends with Tom on facebook for a while, and he recently steered me over here. Looks like a great site! I love all the shark and ray pics. You guys aren't messing around!
I live in central Illinois, but my girlfriend lives in Escondido, so I'll be making frequent trips to CA to visit her. I'm one of those people who keeps a lifelist of the fish species I've caught on hook & line, so I'm very excited to add a bunch of Pacific species.
I don't have many sharks and rays on my lifelist. My only shark is a small silky caught from a boat in the FL Keys.
The two rays I have are both from Tampa. The first is a clearnose skate and the second is a cownose ray.
I also helped my buddies land this big nurse shark in the Keys. To count a species on my lifelist I have to be the one to hook it and fight it, and man oh man did I want to catch my own, but it just wasn't in the cards that trip.
Since the site is geared towards prehistoric species, I bet you guys will like some of the prehistoric freshwater species I've caught.
Lake Sturgeon from Wisconsin
Shovelnose Sturgeon from Indiana
Bowfin from Illinois
Spotted Gar from Illinois
Longnose Gar from Illinois
Shortnose Gar from Illinois
Florida Gar from Florida
I'm coming out to Escondido this weekend and staying through Jan 1st. My girlfriend and I are thinking of checking out Oceanside Pier and maybe doing some shore fishing somewhere as well. We'd love to have recommendations for places to get a good variety of species. We also enjoy meeting up with other people, so if you'd like to get together for some fishing, please let me know! We're pretty flexible on our schedule all of next week.
Cheers,
Ben Cantrell