Late August Keys Sharks.

It's been a long time since I've journeyed down to the Florida Keys and as usually I never leave disappointed.

Max and I arrived Wednesday afternoon and spent most of the day time on different bridges trying to catch fresh bait. The bait situation was lacking (I only caught one horse-eye jack) so we were glad we brought some bait and stopped by Hammer's place for a cuda head. The first spot we tried for sharks was seven mile south side. Baits were set up then we put out snapper baits but had no luck with them.

Max put the horse-eye on his 9/0 and kept missing a small shark. A few hours later the cuda head I had floating on my 12/0 gets slammed, a super stubby bull shark was landed.

It taped out at 6ft 2in, but was ridiculously fat.

Thursday we spent the day between seven mile and long key with shark baits out and every trick in the book to catch more shark bait and again, no luck. A guy gave us a small yellow jack. Max's girl arrived at Long Key and the tide switched. That night we headed to Big Pine and I set up two of our lighter shark rods with baits. We had action the entire night.

The first hit my rod, I set hook and it jumped way out of the water and burned some good drag.

6ft 4in lemon

Rigged my rod again and dropped another bait, before long it was picked up solid, I gave the rod to Max and he landed a lemon.

6ft 0in lemon

It took a while, but Max's reel finally went off. The shark put up a good fight and even ran under. He got it straight up and down and started walking it, but the hooks pulled. It was a lemon around 7ft.

Tide switched so we put baits out on the other side. My 50w never got a break, a third fish hits it, gave it to Max again. It burns heavy drag and jumps a lot. I was only half awake and realized we had a nice tarpon.

It measured 5ft 6in (about 80lbs).