Yes, two fishing reports in the same week! That must be a record for me.
With the long weekend this week, I thought I'd get in another MB session. Joe and Mike both got the invite but they couldn't make it so it was going to be a solo session. I remembered a buddy (Garik) from work was a fisherman and I kept telling him about how much fun bat fishing can be, so I send him a text invite. He's game so we meet up in our AO around 8:30pm. The high was not until 1:30am so I wasn't in a hurry to get to the spot. We set up two rods (one conventional and spinner) I give the Garik the the spinner and the prime spot, hoping to get him a fish. The tide was filling in fast and we had to keep moving the rods back every 1/2 hour. Garik is a fly fisherman and is used to light gear, so using the long rod with a 10/0 hook with 100lb crimped leader was very different for him.
We get our first hit at 10:15pm and it's on the spinner. Garik makes short work of this 25" bat with the Baitrunner 12000.
25"
After the 25" ray my buddy is pretty pumped about bat ray fishing. His mind is kinda blown when I tell him that's a small one.
another 30 minutes go by and we get our second hit of the night. This time it's a much bigger initial hit and run. The bat takes the bait right toward some land based obstacles so I had to take the rod from Garik to avoid getting hung up. I give Garik back the rod and we had to follow the bat back up the sand. Being a Saturday night we had a crowed of people who followed us to see what we had caught. Once we button down the drag we started gaining line on the ray. Garik is a big guy but not use to fish that pull this hard. (trout fisherman
) It takes him about 5 minutes to beach this ray.
44"
Here is the release
Another productive evening last night. Always fun sharing the experience with newbies. Both fish caught on 4oz cannon ball rig with 10/0 hook with double squid.
