Quick Report With A Lil Surprise

Its been dead the past few weeks in my area of Florida. Very few sharks and no rays at all for bait. Regardless, I still can't help going out. Saturday before work I went out and was able to finally find rays and gigged what I needed for the night ahead. Got off work at 8pm and met my apprentice zack at the beach. I decided to put out the little reels with little baits first rather than the big boys with big baits first and while zack was paddling in from dropping the second bait I went up to the truck and come back to find him holding my grandpa's ol 309 levelwind aka the lil feller with a drag screeming. I only put out 1/4th of a dinnerplate ray just for a pup shark and this ain't no pup. About 15 mins. later I saw the dorsal and I realized it was hammer. I grabbed the shark, brought it up into the shallow water, gave one good effort to try to get the hook out of the corner of the mouth but decided I would be putting to much stress on this lil guy so I cut the wire right above the non stainless hook and zack had the honors of dragging this future monster back into the deep water where it kicked away strong. I was able to snap one pic as he started to drag it back to sea and thank god it came out because thats the only material evidence of zacks first hammer. I never measured it or got even look at what sex it was. That lil guy had some spark though. I would guess though it was 6'. A rariety for our area of the west coast this time of year and a welcome surprise. Plus its good to see there are baby hammers around.

*Note: nobody has permission to copy these photos or use them for any purpose without permission from me. Thank you.