Talked Tony into making the drive north with me, we're both glad we did. On the way up Tony kept saying "this is a long drive, I hope we don't get skunked". Got on the sand around 4:30 and within 15 minutes I hooked up. Handed the rod to Tony because he's never caught one before and it promptly dropped off. Withing 2 minutes of him handing me my rod back his goes, and he put his first one on the sand, a 89" male. This was the first shark I've tailed solo, quite the experience. Chad showed up around 5:15 and set up a little south of us, always good to see him. Shortly Tony hooks up again, this time landing a 96" male. Chad does the sand hand duty and we return it to the water. Less than 30 minutes later Tony hooks up again, and puts a 88" female on the sand. At this point I was done handing my rod to him, he's caught his share. While Chad was putting it back in the water my rod hooks up and I put a small male on the sand, maybe 70". We'd been there less than 3 hours and got 5 solid bites and landed 4. Chad had to leave and Tony and I put out new bait (thanks Chad). Less than an hour later my rod goes off again, resulting in another 89" male. We decided to call it at 8:00, but we both got bit a few minutes till so we decided on 8:15. I hook up again and this one broke the shock leader. Now we decide on 8:45, not wanting to leave. At about 8:40 my rod goes again and it takes off north. I told Tony to grab a headlamp and pliers, forgot the phone. I can't believe you guys do this at night, something about being in knee deep water in the dark didn't set well with me. We ended up cutting the leader in about 18" of water and sent it back out. SCREW THAT, I feel much safer when I can see what I'm doing. All in all we got bit or briefly hooked up close to a dozen times, resulting in 6 on the sand. I was kind of bummed we farmed about half our hits, but Tony reminded me a pro ball player would love to bat 500
Chad and I measured the shark at 96" with this arch and open mouth, it wouldn't straighten out. May have been closer to 100"
Like they say, better lucky than good!!Last of the incoming, peak and the outgoing............ mackerel
