2nd trip to St. Andrews state park

Well my 2nd trip to St. Andrews went by extremely fast with not enough fishing as I would have liked due to my wife and kids being there and having to entertain them for the majority of the time. We arrived on Thursday morning and I went to the St. Andrews pier and acquired some fish for the nights first try for sharks (a few hard heads, a hard tail & 1 Bonita)........I went to Sandy point in the pass and ran a couple of baits out and fished for 4-5 hrs until the wife and kids walked down the beach and said they were ready to go back to the tent and go to bed.............. No action for Thursday for all the hard work lugging all the stuff down the pass 800-1000 yards (man I hated having to leave so early that night)

Friday began with a call from Lip_Ripper from another site inviting me to Mexico beach to fish with him and RDMedic71. I was excited to go but I was not able to get away from the family because of only having one vehicle at the beach so I told Eric I will try to make it at dark. I took the kids and wife to the jetties and they played in the water while I fished for more bait but was not able to catch any thing but some funny fish I had no idea what it was but I through it back. I did get an idea though while I was in the swimming area ...............I had been seeing all of the Manta Rays in the shallows so I decided to try add snag a few right before dark after most of the swimmers were gone (did not see any no fishing signs)....well I snagged couple of rays and boy did they like flying out of the water I put the rays in a bag and was fixing to leave and I see the park ranger coming down the beach on his 4 wheeler........someone called him and said I was fishing for sharks. I guess they miss understood me when they asked me what I was going to do with the rays...they were going to be bait for sharks that night. Oh well the ranger gave me a warning for fishing in a no fishing area all though it was not actually posted.....he said if I would have been 25 yards further out and got the rays from the rocks it would have been OK. He made me throw the rays back even though they were dead and told me to I could snag them from the rocks or go on the other side of the last bouy. There was only a few people 10 or so in the water so I do not see what it hurt but oh well. After that I took the family back to camp and headed for Mexico beach to try and fish with Lip_Ripper. After looking around Mexico beach trying to find where he was (his cell phone was dead so I could not find out exact details) I finally found someone on the beach with glow sticks hanging from there line so I figured it was him...........man did I startle him when I woke him up

After he woke up all the way we began to talk and I found out Eric is a very nice guy and very passionate about shark fishing.....man all the stuff he had hauled to the beach made what I haul around look like a little easter basket compared. I will have to admit when I got there my intention was to run bait out on my 2 rods but the waves were breaking really far out at the sand bar so with my little experience kayaking in the breaking surf I decided to pull up a chair and talk with Eric and watch any action he had from his 2 rods he had out. He ended up having a few short runs on his 9/0 and one on his 14/0 but no hook ups.........finally around 2am Saturday morning his 9/0 gets a hit and and his glow stick goes out over the water about 30 yards and Eric springs into action and set the hook........what happened next was a big surprise. Eric hands me the rod and I thought I was going to hold it until he got his gear on but to my surprise he put it on me and lets me start the job of reeling in the shark (first time hooking up with something of any size because I am completely new to the sharking world....only caught a few pups from behind a hotel back in May which got me thinking about buying some gear and going for bigger sharks) so I start reeling the shark in and Eric is coaching me along and after I think was around 10 maybe 15 minutes the female Bull shark is close enough for Eric to tail rope and pull her to the beach. Man what a site .....first time around a shark bigger than 2 foot.........so we measured her and she was 6'4". So we took a few pic's and put her back in the water and watched her go back out. We sat and talked for a couple more hours and I helped him pack up and called it a night. I can not think Eric enough for the opportunity to reel in that shark....it really meant alot. Eric is a class guy and and really seems dedicated to sharking.......he is an example of why I wanted to join these forum's because everyone seems very willing to share info and help out the new guys as much as they can ........................THANKS VERY MUCH ERIC

Saturday evening I did not get to fish because I went swimming with the kids, went out to eat and watched fireworks.

I tell you after reeling the Bull in I can not wait to get back to the beach and try again and hopefully I can return the favor to Eric if we get to fish together again in the future.