Last night was a memorable evening of shark fishing indeed which I'm still pinching myself. The guy who caught the Great White off the beach a few years ago, Jeff, wanted to show me how to fish paddled out baits before he moved back east. I'm not familiar with the SD/OC border, but he lives pretty much right there.
I met up with him armed with kayak and a bat ray as bait. Needless to say that he didn't get a license for 2016 and since he's moving soon and just decided to play sand hand for me. We set up some rods and I used bat ray as bait for the first time. Bat Ray chunks are heavy as hell and I even put a chunk on for casted bait as well. The bat ray wasn't getting bit, so I switched up to some big bonito I had. I cast out and got slammed on it, but missed the bite. I re-baited and tried again, but made a poor cast. I went to reel it in immediately and was snagged onto something. For f@ck sake... big expensive rig already going to break off. Jeff was going to put the kayak in to try and get my rig back when I told him not to bother and I was snagged up good. As I was pulling, I finally felt the sinker slip from whatever it was stuck on and started reeling in fast just to have it "Get Stuck" again. This time, the get stuck part started pulling back!
69.5" Soupie!
Not bad for a new beach for me... We reeled in the bat ray that wasn't touched on the yakked rod as it was in the way and we just set up the long rods. It's a lot of work putting a paddled bait out there. A Lot more work than I'm willing to do unless if I lived on the Gulf Coast of course.
The bonito I brought was huge so I switched to mack and so glad I did. Kelp started to become a problem, so a close eye on the gear was a must.
A little while later and I see a familiar bounce of the rod... Right away it looked like a Seven and sure enough got my first Seven of the evening on the beach!
A very FAT 80"
Now I was 2 for 3 on the shark bites and a just at high tide, I had a big hit #4! Problem was it didn't stick and things went quiet for a while.
The tide was on its way out and it was getting late. I still had a drive ahead of me and felt pretty darn good about the evening. Jeff got to see his first Sevengill and I got to learn all about yakkin baits, gulf coast style. Just then my rod makes a huge bounce and I was all over it. I felt the rod starting to load up and gave a hookset that stopped me in my tracks.... This girls was on the bigger side!
She made a circular flip out of the water and I saw that she had some size to her. Heavy, Heavy Heavy! One of the fattest ones I've caught. I'm glad Jeff is a marine and in great shape as it got to the beach all agro and looking to take someone out. Jeff brought his tail rope, but it didn't want him to rope her at all and he wound up in a tug of war with her tail to slide her up the beach just enough. I took a pic of him during/after his epic battle! lol
Here it almost knocked him over with a tail slap to the head!
99" of FAT victory! (I don't know if she was eating well or just pregnant, but she had some girth to her)
I cast another bait out just to have it picked clean with bait stealers and called it the night. I learned a lot of new techniques tonight, new baits, new location, epic catches and met a really cool peep in Jeff. I can hear that story of the Great White over and over... One day, I'll get on that short list, but in the meantime I'm super stoked how the night turned out.
Soupie - Bonito Incoming
Seven #1 - Mack Head - High Tide
Seven #2 - Mack Head - Outgoing Tide
3 for 5 on the shark bites...
