When big fish come our way,we dont play.THE KEYS. MANY pics.

After a lot of planning, a lucky 3 day weekend, and some anxious waiting, we finally headed southbound for the keys bridges.

Made a checklist...

Rods in hummer: check

Rods out of hummer: check

Rigs on rods: check

The first stop was seven-mile bridge, it was a real shot in the dark this time, there just weren't any sharks that night there. But there were a decent amount of fish if you were fishing for them, but I just went to sleep most of that night.

We tried to tell the fish that it wasn't Halloween yet... but they were already dressed up

17 inch snapper

Those bridge rats are really starting to scare me now...

We had one screaming run on a rigging with mullet and eel for bait, it was Adams fish, the thing was just burning him on the 9/0, almost went to the old bridge and cut him off, but after a while, the 80-100lb southern ray was straight up and down and cut off without harm.

the pictures were no good...

The aftermath of last night. what hit that?

The next morning held out a little more promising...

there were quite a few mackerel out and about during the day time, monster jacks seemed to be everywhere, had cuda, snook, jack, snapper, shark lost a lot of fish. Ended up with 2 rays for bait after deciding whether to call it quits or move to another bridge with more baits.

Who said snappers are only caught on bait

eagle rays were everywhere

how bout' more?

mack attack

With 2 nice sized rays we were wearily set off towards long key with an appetite for destruction (and for breadsticks and fastfood provided by papa johns and wendys )

I started sending out everyone's baits and just as fast as I could send them out they were getting hit, blacktips cruising around every five minutes it was like a pier rat's heaven

Dan lost a shark on the 50 wide so I sent out the midsection of a ray on Adam's duel... soon he was hooked up

this shark wasn't too happy and made a lot of cuts left and right

leverage is important when bridge fishing

as the shark cut fast right, we cut fast left to compensate

CLICK TO WATCH
messing with the video setting for a little

getting closer

and closer

some cool shots

the bull was having a temper tantrum...

The mission down the seawall...

I was shortly behind

fat bull

trying to grab it's dorsal or tail came to be a bad idea... I grabbed its tail and thought... this won't go well, so I let it go

took a few attempts to get the shark on the seawall

when it got to this side of the seawall, the current was insane and Adam could barely hold on to the shark that looked as if it was on a treadmill swimming 30mph...

same shark, different angle

it's hard for me to explain, but the way this shark was wiggling, it wiggled right up the seawall with Adam and I pulling on the leader

we pulled when the shark wasn't helping us and both almost fell backwards as the shark was only skin hooked and the hooks pulled easily out of the shark... just goes to show what will happen when you put 100lbs of drag on your shark if it isn't hooked absolutely perfectly...

This is the picture of moments after the shark was pushed back in. The shark also helped. I considered this shark as very smart. 7.5-8ft very hefty shark, nice catch.

HERE IS A 20 MINUTE VIDEO OF ALMOST THE ENTIRE FIGHT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkT61FuIXX0
It has a few things some people might find funny, others may not catch them

This is when I accidentally pressed the video mode on the camera...

Short clip of the shark

Moments after we scurry back up the seawall, I am gathering up rods around the bridge, reeling in shark rods, and such, and Adam runs towards the 9/0, picks it up and sets hook, then hands the rod to me, the fish just starts dumping me out towards the poles, I started to wonder if it was even a jewfish anymore, but on the 60 or 80lb test I was using, there wasn't much controlling the 100-125lb jewfish.

There was only so many decent pics that could be taken with the lack of light...

hooked up, trying to figure out why the 9/0 looks like a huge reel in this pic

no good...

night vision... still no good.

the tide raising really doesn't help us...

Adam was really the star this trip, with those yellow gloves, leadering all the fish... very experienced with leadering fish from working on the charter boats for years.

and then there was the bass that ate the basketball

the best picture we could get...

Sorry for such a crappy post... but I'm on a limited time window.