Getting Used to Winter Sharking

Been a while since I have posted up a report, but we have still been doing a little fishing. As always, when the waters cool we start to move our focus more towards the inshore game, fishing for redfish, trout, and sheepshead. But.. this year has been so warm we decided to keep sharking some. No one really fishes for or catches any sharks during the winter where we are, but we figured if we were gonna fish in the winter we might as well fish our best spot. So on two occasions we have driven an hour south to a spot we have yet to get skunked at, even in the winter months.

On the first trip we got down to the spot around 5:45am, as everyone was setting up, kyle already had a casted bait in the water,and not 5 minutes later the battle doubled over. We first thought it was a red and then realized it was a shark. We forgot the pier net so we had to walk it down to the beach to land it. It was a 4'10" sand tiger.

The sand tiger was caught using a chunk of seatrout for bait.

right after sunrise

Around 7:30, Kyle yakked out the 80, the 10/0 and the 12/0. The 80 and 12 had big pieces of black drum while the 10 had a small sheepshead. At 12:30, the 10 took off with no hesitation, ging got harnessed in and held on while this fish yanked him around for a little bit. We thought all was well, but as the shark was about 50 yards off of the end of the pier somehow the 400 lb shock section on the leader was cut through. We arent sure if another shark cut it, that shark turned and bit it, or it hit some kind of structure.

No more hits that day and we decided to head home around 8 that night.

Two weeks later we decided to head down again. Everyone was tied up with something, but eventually cam and eckerd decided they would head down with me. We got down around 2 in the afternoon and had sheepshead deployed on cams 80 and my 12 around 3:30. At 4:45 my 12 doubled over and dumped out about 10-15 yards of line. I grabbed the rod and harnessed up and proceeded to death winch this foul hooked sandbar in.


cam also caught this small sandbar on his mxl

Now is when it got real. Cam took the evening yak, taking out the 80 and 12 far with sheepshead. After that he dropped his 50trx only about 80 yards off the pier with a sheep. About 15 minutes later, the rex hit a scream i have never heard. Sounded similar to hooking a blacktip on a 4000 size spinning reel. Cam threw the rex to strike, it ripped him to the rail and into the south corner at the end of the pier and kept going the same speed if not faster. About 3 minutes into being smoked at 45 lbs we feel something rubbing the line, this we figured was a crab trap that we saw about 400 yards off the end of the pier... The fish kept heading on a course headed towards the bahamas for about 5 more minutes before the hook suddenly pulled. I have a video from the last third of the fight, but dont have a youtube to post it to. To see it check out our instagram page- southgeorgiasharkers or my facebook- Adam Cudd
What this fish was we have no idea. this was by far the biggest fish we have hooked. It was stroking 45 lbs of drag like it was in freespool. Hammer? not likely Tiger? little more likely but still not so much Dusky? probably, the one i dont even want to name? Id like to think so, but we will never know. We are going back next weekend. We arent stopping till we get him. Hope i have a report for yall next weekend. Thanks for reading.