One Man Gang - 11/03/11

After work today I went down to the beach..with all the tourists here lately I’ve been hitting the beach later anyways. But that gives me less time to catch fresh bait. Today I arrived to rough, windy, and chilly conditions. A friend of mine who lives close to where I was fishing was going to meet me down there once he got out of work, but his lady had other plans for him when he got home. The water feels so much cooler now. I brought a King Kong bait from home that I caught last week, cast netted some small mullet, chunked them up and fished for more bait on my spinning rods while getting the shark rods set up. The sun was going down and I didn’t have much time to catch bait..once it gets dark here I seem to mostly catch catfish while surf fishing. All that was biting was small ladyfish so I kept releasing them. Then I managed to get a pretty good sized bluefish.

I rigged up the King Kong bait to the 12/0 and it was pretty interesting trying to get it out in the rough surf in my POS canoe, a good amount of water spilled over the front on the way out and I nearly got rolled on the way back in. It was even nasty 250 yards out. I rigged the blue up to my tld 25 and once I got out about 150 yards I just dropped it there..the current made it feel like I was paddling on a treadmill. Not long after I got back to the beach, right at sunset the Kong bait got picked up. I tightened the drag and reeled tight and it felt like a decent fish, but I stopped him dead in his tracks. It was a tug of war, he wasn’t able to take any drag until he got to the sandbar, then he was able to take just a little. Got him to the shore and it was what I had suspected..a bull shark. I was able to get a good picture thanks to the young couple that watched me fight it.

I still had half of my bait, the bull slid it up the leader. I re-rigged it and ran that back out there and that probably wasn’t a smart move since the wind picked up and the surf got worse..but it paid off. A few hours later I got another run on the 12/0 and my recycled bait. I tightened the drag and reeled tight. The fish didn’t feel big, I thought to myself how was this shark able to put that bait down..it was still about 15 to 18 lbs. Not long after I hooked up on that fish, my TLD with the blue went off. This was a first for me, getting a run while already hooked up when fishing solo. I stuck the 12/0 back in the rod holder and picked up the glowstick and put it on the bottom guide (now you know why you see the pvc buried so deep into the sand in my beach pictures). I ran over to the TLD and hooked up on that fish.

I decided which fish I wanted the most, and the one on the TLD was fighting harder so I fought that fish to the shore as quick as I could. Throughout the fight I kept looking over at my 12/0 and noticed the glow stick got knocked off so that fish was still on. I landed another bull shark, a nice fight on the light tackle. After I released that I ran back over to the 12/0 and the fish was still there, trying to swim along with the strong current. I whipped him quickly, fought him stand up style with no harness on the 12/0. A lemon shark. This time I didn’t get my bait back, and I was out..so unfortunately I had to leave em biting tonight, plus the surf was like a washing machine out there, even though the wind had died down a bit. First shark was a measured 7’5” bull, second was a measured 7’2” bull, and the third shark was an estimated 7 to 7 and a half ft lemon..seen so many lemons this year I didn’t bother to measure it. All 3 sharks successfully released to get bigger.