On friday afternoon, Pat and I decided to launch off the beach to intercept the passing bait schools on their way down south. We hit the sand around 3pm, paddled and paddled and paddled until we found one big bait pod that we stayed on til sunset. Every cast yielded a jack, bluefish, or shark. We had to lock the drags down as the spinner/blacktip sharks were so aggressive that they would chase the jacks to the kayak looking for an easy meal. Around 7pm the bait pod dispersed but I made one more cast before heading in and while my gotcha plug was sinking, a king swiped at it....zzZzZzz. First run almost spooled my little redfish reel but thanks to the pedals on my Hobie I was able to catch up and gain line back. It ended up being 47" total length.
The next day we set up with the 6/0, 9/0, and 12/0 at 1pm. I think we ran 12 baits out, all of which got hit. Ended up with 3 blacktips to 67", 1 spinner at 70", and 1 bull at 73.5"..all female except the bull. We had one blacktip that got chewed up around sunset. At night we had 2 big baits out, both got it, one of which never stopped running for over a minute on a locked drag but unfortunately the hook pulled. That ones gonnna haunt me for a while. The other bait yielded the 73.5" bull shark that was tagged by Mote Marine. Still awaiting some info from them on when/where they tagged him.
"I think you're gonna need a bigger boat"
