The Nurse Curse Is Real

I went out Monday mid-afternoon, got to the beach and got some bait. There wasn't many people around so I took out a couple of smaller baits..one with all mono leader. The one with the wire got picked up first Got a 5 and a half ft blacktip, released it, ran my line back out, then soon after the all mono leader rig with half a catfish got picked up. When I didn't see the tarpon leaping out I knew I was in trouble, it was a shark and I was likely going to get bit off soon. I am almost positive it was a small hammer by how incredibly fast it was swimming, maybe a 5-6 footer, ended up biting me off after 2-3 minutes. Enough screwing around, getting closer to dusk and time to take out the big baits and big leaders. My brother met me down at the beach later on. Just after sunset we got another run and I let him take it..he was hooked up to a good shark, but was soon cut off and he wasn't too pleased since he hasn't gotten to go much this year. Around 11 he had to leave, and around midnight I got another run, on a really big bait. I hooked the fish and was hoping to hear the beautiful sound the spool makes when it spins hard on locked drag, but no..I muscled in a 6 and a half ft bull to the beach. 2-3 hours later and no runs so I start packing up and my rod with a smaller bait goes off, and I got my personal best nurse shark (if there even is such a thing). It was a big one, right around 9'. My camera wasn't working, so I had to take pics with my cell phone and head lamp and couldn't get a pic of the whole fish..I shouldn't have even bothered, I think it cursed me...

Thursday I give it another shot, get down to the beach mid afternoon as usual to get bait and I notice there's like 3 different groups of people fishing for sharks, and they are all fishing right on top of each other at the place I usually set up at..I check the time and figure they'd be long gone before I even intended on putting out my shark rods, and headed down further to avoid that cluster$*&# to catch fresh bait. I also caught mackerel and snook. Just as I suspected the other groups of people fishing for sharks had left..I ran my lines out, one medium size bait and one big one, and since I wasn't able to get much fresh bait earlier I left a bait rod out. I got my first run around 9:30 on the medium size bait and got another 6 and a half bull..gave me the worst shark rash of my career. I released it and put another bait rod out to try and get something fresh to run back out on that rod. Not long after that the big bait got picked up..I was hooked up and it felt like a good fish, it was taking some drag off the locked down 12/0 Then all the sudden my line went slack, I thought the fish was charging me but it wasn't..I reel tight again and I am hung up on something..no idea exactly what happened probably had something to do with a crab trap rope though. The curse of the nurse is taking over..I was able to pull my rig loose and I could still feel my big bait on the other end..whatever it was gulped that big bait down whole. I left it out there and eventually got another run, and the same thing happened again, except this time I could feel the headshakes while my line was hung up on some submerged object..this was also a good shark too, probably either a really big lemon or a real nice bull..I didn't know what to do so I put the rod back in the holder hoping it would come loose..after a while nothing changed and I could still see my rod tip bouncing from the head shakes. So I tried pulling it lose, didn't really want to try to go out there and try to get it loose since I was out there by myself. My line ended up breaking. I was also out of fresh bait and didn't even have so much as a pilchard to try and get more..so I regretfully left them biting. Lost 2 good sharks and a shark leader but I guess you just charge it to the game, I hope the nurse shark curse wears off by the next time I go out, here are some pictures...