my buddy Don and I hit up Ft. Pickens pier last night from 8pm to 6am. We pushed through the storm all night with no bites until around 1am when i had a short run. then around 2 Don hooks up on his 9/0! he's running 80lb mono and full drag (some wehre around 23-25lbs?) and this beast takes him for a ride! we had only tossed our baits over the rail by hand about 30ft and let them sink into the depths of around 45ft. On the initial run he lost a good 70 yards of line! after 15 mins of fighting it out in the channel it starts comming closer and were working on a game plan to try to get him on the sand before it can wrap around the front of the pier or go under... well, it went under. another 10-15minutes of him bent over the rail and my shining my spot light down there so we can get the right angle of pull and it finally come out of the pilons and up to the surface.
We had no clue what was on the line. it was bulldogging the entire time and its runs were smooth with no head shakes or tail slaps. when it finally surfaced it came up sideways and curled and i thought he had a big ole nurse shark from the shining eye and big round "head", then it flattened out and we could tell it was a ray!
50" wing span (its round not diamond) and 69" from tip to tail. unfortunately the only pic that was worth a damn was with me after pulling it out, so he didn't get a good shot with his first monster ray.
she shit out some babies before we released her so i released two of them on 18/0 circles back off the end. 
like feeding candy to a child.
Nice looking bait size ray. Sounds like the catch was fun. Thanks for the Post.