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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.

We had some guys out shark fishing this morning, but I dont think they had much luck.

Good stuff Doug.

Sweet Doug!

Might of been a big tiger that chomped on that blacktip... sure would've been cool to get one of those from the beach!

Wow, nice king and some fun shark fishing too.

Very cool

I'll bet everyone slept good that night....

DouGR81 wrote: We had one blacktip that got chewed up around sunset.

Whatever hit that shark was a monster. A 5 foot shark is a big piece of bait!

seeinred wrote:Sweet Doug!

Might of been a big tiger that chomped on that blacktip... sure would've been cool to get one of those from the beach!

Ah, don't say that! Been hitting the sand hard lately for the sole reason of catching a tiger.

Rik wrote:
Whatever hit that shark was a monster. A 5 foot shark is a big piece of bait!

Pretty sure we hooked the monster later that night..my guess would be a big bull or hammer based on the run/fight

You gotta have a lota respect for any fish that can put a 5' black tip in it's mouth, chew it up and then spit it out. If you hook that one expect to be there a while, that is if you have the gear to tame it with. I am thinking a 12/0 reel with at least 20' of 200' mono leader (for the tail whip) and a few feet of very heavy wire. and what, a #12 or 16 circle hook. Obviously you will need at least a 5# bait to even get the fish interested. Go for it.

"I think you're gonna need a bigger boat"

Did you hear anything else about the tags from Mote Marine Lab? I know they tagged a bunch of fish back in May for the Guy Harvey Shark Challenge.
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FLfishchaser wrote:Did you hear anything else about the tags from Mote Marine Lab? I know they tagged a bunch of fish back in May for the Guy Harvey Shark Challenge.
http://ultimatesharkchallenge.squarespace.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I talked with Jack Morris from Mote a few days ago..he said they have other people outside their laboratory that they distributed the orange tags to so they don't actually have the information on file for this shark..when he locates the original tagger I will post up some info. He did say there are about 3000 sharks swimming around with the orange tags and more than likely my bull was tagged in Sarasota.

Nice day on the water!

Saw a big tiger in clearwater back in July while working on a boat. Could have been one of three sharks Hammerhead(my guess), Tiger(very possible), Or great white (also very possible)