Went down to the jetty the other day to try to catch some blacktips. We only had a few mullet so we were chunk baiting them. I threw out the head of a mullet right off the corner of the T. After cam had caught a few whiting i was about to reel in to rebait, and as soon as i grabbed the rod line started to peel off.. i set up on it and immediatley tightened the drag so he couldnt get into the rocks and break me off... W full drag and my hand trying to slow him down he still managed to shoot into a rock and cut the line.. We arent sure if this was a monster ray or a decent lemon.. no headshakes, but it was only hooked for a few seconds and it fought alot different than a normal ray. Next i put out another chunk of mullet and the rod soon doubled over. As soon as i set the hook I knew it was a ray. The big rays we have been plagued by the past few weeks.. we cant seem to catch a shark on casted gear the big rays have taken over.
Too bad we didnt have a cooler big enough with us otherwise this guy woulda been bait...
A few minutes later cam catches a 14inch whiting and puts it out live. Before too long he gets a blistering run and hooks a giant ray.. it takes off south then shoots towards the jetty.. Cam is cupping the spool so hard to stop it the rod is about to snap, but the ray still gets under a rock somehow.. he goes under the rock and keeps going thru the other side.. Cam loosened the drag and now there was nothing to do as the ray continued to run toward africa.. All we could do was wait for the tide to go down so we could walk out on the jetty to try to free the line.. we did eventually try, but couldnt get it out. By that time cam is down to 1/5 of a spool on his 8000 battle loaded with 65 braid. we had no other choice so we just tried to yank it out until the line finally snapped.
right after it went under the rock.
A little while later i put out a small live whiting and it got hit, but the fish didnt commit. A few minutes later it commited and i leaned back into it.. at first it felt like a 20 lb ray, then like a smaller shark. then it broke the surface and i saw it was a bull red... in the middle of summer.. which is rare here. We eventually got it up the jetty. took a few pictures then released it.
that night our friend from Athens was down fishing on Jekyll.. he had a bonita out and got his dad this 7 and a half foot lemon.
look forward to posting another report soon. We should be doing some fishing this weekend. Tight lines!
Wow I'd love to fish there