Decent spring start keys trip - 3/26/11 jewfish and lemon

My alarm went off at 4 in the morning and all my reels and rods were already out and ready to go, get picked up by my friend and new junior angler achot (soviet sharker), he had permit fever so we stopped and bought a bunch of crabs from dawns tackle in homestead. We get to channel 2 and see a lot of tarpon rolling everywhere, but the tide wasn't in our favor, we decided to stop and look at channel 5 but the water was like mud, kept on driving and decided to unload everything at long key.

It was outgoing and we had limited shark bait, so we decided to try and get some cudas, turns out the cudas just werent there yet, i had about a 15lber on for 5-10 minutes and he spit hook and that was it, after a couple more hours of trollign and a few tarpon inhaling baits, i noticed it was getting near slack tide.

I had an urge, i just felt the need to put a bait out, soon enough there was a nice king head down between the bridges on my 12/0, not even ten minutes later i was on, i set hook and the hooks pulled, i dropped the bait back down. In almost a minute of walkign away from my rod i hear some light clicks and see 2 jewfish fighting for my bait, one of them grabbed it and took off steady, i set hook and ran down the bridge as he was charging for the piling, after about 10-15 minutes i had teh fish straight up and down. 5ft 150-180lb jewfish, achot will post those pics.

My first JEWFISH:

notice he tried every direction he could for thsoe pilings

straight up and down

hard to compare size really

that is a huge mack head in his mouth, i personally estimate this fsh at 5ft 200lbs

The tide switched back to outgoing by the time we collected baits from various marinas and ate, yet we still had the urge to fish outgoing at 7-mile, met up with JD Fagan and he brought out his big guns, twin 14/0 set ups and he put out a yellowtail and some other bait, i had out a wahoo and a mackeral carcass and achot had a yellowtail and a boni out.

JD and I got bored so he shined a light i nthe water at his bait and we saw a big shark on top for our baits, 5 minutes later JD's 14/0 gets hit and he subdued the fat lemon pretty quickly

bowed up

Fishing with JD can sometiems be a luxury, he has just about every scenario played out in his head before it can ever happen, for example he now makes these special riggings just for certain bridges which include a giant swivel and enough mono that you can grab the swivel fro mteh bridge and put a clip on it tied to a rope and walk the shark down.

After a tedious walk we get down under the bridge with pliers, a measurign tape and the camera, i figured out the angles and JD figured otu the poses, all in the dark practically, these pics are just amazing for a lemon shark!

finally calmed him down

big boy lemon

and the best picture!

female lemon 7ft 9in inbetween the bridges and kicked it's ass, jd's first lemon this year, the lemons are back in full turn everybody