We chose our water, set up, and went original with bunker chunks and oil. I said there would be no fish . . . and there were no fish. After about two hours, with the tide already a ways out, my rod had some life. And then again. The fish never returned, but it definitely wasn't the shake of the S swell and SSW wind. 'Someone's rod is going down soon' I told Will and Chris. 'I can feel it. Someone is going to get slammed.' About 20 minutes later the glow tip on Will's 12ft rod was bent down to eye level. Told you so!
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| Even though it wasn't a 200lb bull shark, the big catch was not disappointing. 72 inches! If this was a spiny butterfly ray, it was near the maximum size of the species and very near the record 72 inch ray taken in Virginia in 2008. |
And what a battle. No shark I've caught or seen caught peeled out line like this thing! There must have been smoke coming off the reel in the first run, and second run, and third run, and fourth run . . . And it hit while I was talking about buying seal blubber and fishing Cape Cod for great whites. Once we figured it was most definitely a ray and not a white shark, which wasn't until halfway into the fight, there was no doubt it was a big one, and the encouragement to land it was high. The time from hook up to beaching was probably the better part of half an hour.
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| It took the three of us all of our effort to get the great creature back to the water. |
The 72 inch monster was it for the night, not because of fatigue, rather I was perked up for more but there were no more hits. While there was no argument it is the record ray for the team, the beast was close in width to the 72 inch record ray caught in Virginia in 2008- a fish that was 278lbs! We put ours back, it didn't enter my mind to keep it, and I could only estimate that it weighed A LOT. It took ten minutes and all the effort of three people to get it back into the surf. When it got some water beneath it, it glided away effortlessly. What a great catch and release!
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| The water temperatures have been and are insanely above normal (averages for each location for August 1-15 are in the 70s), but the shark fishing has stunk for the most part. I guess the stingrays have taken over. |
Even though there are no sharks around, the ray was enough to get me to fish again Saturday, lazily at the local beach. It's been so slow that beach chairs were introduced and accepted into the camp area. Not expecting much, as I was talking on the phone with Rick my rod went down. I set up, pulled back and had nothing- a bite off- or more appropriately a cut off since it's unlikely a shark with a mouth bigger than 12 inches of 135lb wire had blasted me. That got me pumped, but there would be no more. As far as shark fishing goes, there is nothing around here. Nothing consistent anyway.
Right now a gusty SSW wind is blowing and a S swell is expected to fill in tonight and tomorrow. Since there haven't been many substantial S wind events recently, it will be interesting to see how much upwelling there is, with my guess being there is just so much warm water it will be hard to chill down. The elements continue to be of the stifling variety- hot, humid, crowded, bum fishing, etc . . . and I don't see much of a break this week. Even the current tropical cyclones, Ernesto and Florence, are looking pretty lame.
***Update. A record ray has been located! Something to strive for next summer . . .
