Casted Gear Sharks and Big Jacks

After fishing in Palm, we decided to head back to the Delray Beach area for our family vacation, and of course I brought the rods down. We fished Delray for three nights with good amberjack and jack baits and didn't get a single hit. Alot of other guys fishing the same area as us had the same luck... nothing. On the last day my dad and I took a charter trip to fish offshore. We caught tons of big bonitos, blackfins, mangrove snappers, black grouper, and some other assorted species. After not getting touched in Delray we drove up about 20 minutes to our spot in Palm Beach. I dropped a fresh bonito on the 12, and casted out smaller chunks of bonito on my casted rod.

Around 9:00pm I look down and see some commotion at the waters edge, and all I could see was a big brown thing. At first I thought somehow a gummy has managed to beach itself, but then I walked down and saw it was the biggest sea turtle I had ever seen.

Later that night my saltist doubled over and began singing. As I grabbed the rod out of the spike I faintly saw the splash of a big blacktip airing out. Right after that he was off... i guess he threw the hook when he jumped. I was bummed out, because it was the only hit of the week, and it was gone just as quick as it had come. I rebaited with a small piece that was left from the bonitos tail and casted back out hoping for another blacktip. About 10 minutes later it doubled over again, and I laid the steel to this one. This shark jumped as well then went on a hard run. I was thinking it was a blacktip the whole time until I saw the classic double dorsal of a lemon. This nice lemon measured 7'3" and had a nice belly on it.

The next day we were back in Georgia fishing again. Ogden was fishing over on the infamous Jekyll island. They were watching a school of pogies get blown up on, so they threw their casted baits as close to the pod as they could and were rewarded with this nice blacktip.

A few minutes later Ogden saw what he thought was a tail come up in the school, he swore it looked like a tiger, but no one believed him. Within a few minutes he was hooked up to this nice little set of stripes.

While on the hunt for bait (ladyfish) in one of the saltwater lagoons on the island Andrew spotted this...

A few days after the tiger trip we were down a little south again. We were fishing a secluded area on the beach. We were trying to keep baits out all day and into the night, and it worked fine, but the sharks just weren't around. Around noon we saw a school of big jacks destroying a pogy pod. I set out in the kayak and manged to nab one of the big jacks from the school. It really doesnt get any better than multiple big jacks chasing a popper.

We went back out for the next few days and continued to sight fish these huge jacks. First we would spot the schools from the beach then paddle out to them in the kayaks. It was some of the most fun fishing I have done in a while.

Thanks for reading, we have been catching aton of smaller sharks around the 4 ft mark lately, but hopefully a big one is in the near future.