One Black Tip report 2/7/09

I left yesterday afternoon to see if I could launch my kayak but there was no luck. The wind was too strong for me, yes I know I am getting old. Went to check things out at several spots and decided on one. I started with my Torium 30 and 4 feet of 80 with 3.5 feet of wire and my 9 foot rod (it’s a bridge rod but hey it does the job just about everywhere I go). My #10 wire was cut off so I said, what? May there are some medium sharks here. It was still night time and the waves were still too close to each other, so I decided to go stupid and do it old school. I got my 12/0, I walked my bait out until I could no longer walk, and tossed my bait as far as I could into the first gut hoping to make the trip worth it and at least catch a small shark. Half hour into the change of tides (start of outgoing) and the line started to peel with small zzzzzzzzznnnnnnnn’s got the rod, set the hook, and 3 minutes later a male blacktip was in. The BT was green as hell jumping all over. It had a hook on it’s side and as it was jumping that hook fell off and so did mines almost getting wrapped on my legs. I took the shark by the tail held it by the water a bit and measured it. As my son took pics, I tagged it and then released it. Having caught my 9 o'clock small train, I went home at 10:00 p.m. Let’s see how far this BT shark will go, the tag number is B312545...

Here are the pics.

Below it's the small fight. No need for harness here just the good old sand to make a comfortable fighting chair.

This is the measurement of the shark. Did this one according to NOAA guidelines so it's 71.5 inches

The tail close up shot

The shark

I am going to try with the big bait again for a couple of hours at night. I hope I will be able to kayak the bait out.

Till next time, I am off to prepare my rods.