West Coast Migration 10/02

Last friday was a bait haul day out of the kayak for me. The migration on our coast is a bit different than the east coast but there is a southerly migration off the beaches and in the bays that can get quite hectic. I loaded up the cooler in a matter of 2 hours with ladyfish, bluefish, stingray, and even a big pompano. You know you're a die hard when you rather use pompano for shark bait instead of having a nice dinner.

I originally planned to shark fish with the club in Boca saturday night but my buddy Pat flew down from Chicago so we collectively decided to put baits out down south, closer to home. The afternoon started slow but around 3-4pm the bite picked up. While Pat was waiting for a clicker to go off I ventured a few hundred yards off the beach to try and add to our bait arsenal. The spanish macs were going crazy on the bait pods but before I had a chance to catch one a blacktip ate my silver spoon! I didn't bring any cutters on the kayak so I placed the rod in the holder and paddled back to the beach and finished the fight from shore. While tagging the 40" blacktip, the 6/0 wide went off and Pat set the hook while I released the first blacktip. Not much of a fight but we tagged another BT at 45". The next run came a few minutes later and ended up being a fat 5'5" blacktip that fought valiantly given its size. Must be the cooler water. Tagged, removed hook, photographed, and released.

We had one more run on a big bait on the 12/0 but missed the hookset. The lines were quiet until a quarter to 9pm when the 9/0 went off out of no where. After jamming the hook pretty good, the reel came off the seat of the rod. We nonchalantly tried to put it back together since we thought we missed the shark but then the line started peeling off the senator..OH CRAP, we scrambled to get the reel back on the rod and after a minute I was back in the harness. Thirty minutes later we get in the wade gut and land this nice big bull. Couldn't tag em since my tagging needle straightened 90 degrees while attempting to do so...lol, tough skin! It was a great fight on the 9/0 and pulled a lot of drag the last 10 minutes. We acted quickly, removed the hook (much easier to do with a shaved barb), and released him back to the depths.