Sleepy Hollow Flattie - Monday 4/29

My day off was today so I headed out to Sleepy Hollow after I dropped off my son at school. Parked and walked out to the bank around 10am. First spot was the rightside point, no hits. Second spot I moved to the leftside point, saw some mullet so I decided to hang around. Tried the white Gulp Mantis Shrimp with no luck. Switched to the white Gulp Swimming Mullet and caught a nice 15" flounder. Next cast I see something about 16-18" long attack my bait, could've been a small blue? I don't know because it spit the hook and left. Moved to the culvert area and caught a big crab. That was it for the morning. One flounder in the bucket is still a good day fishing to me!

Flat Bridge 4/23 Night Fishing - Zacks Big Shark!

Me and Zack hit the bridge with the usual bait...frozen ladyfish and plastic jigs. The ladyfish were thick, I could see them busting the bait on the water surface all near the bridge. Looked like they were after the river shrimp that were running. Once in awhile you could see a live shrimp skipping along the surface trying to get away from predators below.

At around 12:20 AM, Zack gets a solid hit on his chunk of ladyfish. His drag is singing and both of us have that "oh shit" feeling that something big is on the hook. Took about 10 minutes to get it close, the last 5 minutes I'm recording a video of Zack reeling away. I'm kinda coaching him along too, basically telling him to let the fish run if it wants to run. Zack dominated the reel and took his time only reeling when the fish stopped running. So it's been about 10 minutes and we first see a glob of seaweed hanging from his line, which confused me at first cause I see his weight hanging on the line too. I'm like, where's the fish? First glance of the fish eventually and I saw a nice dorsal fin, then I get a glance of it's nose and I see the tell tale shovel face...it's a large Bonnethead shark! This one we didn't try to lift, cause I remembered what happened last time I tried that (see previous post). Anyway, we directed it towards the shore where there's alot of rocks but I thought maybe we could steer it in then grab it. Well, my plan didn't work out so well. Zack was still on the bridge holding his rod with the shark on, and I'm down under the brige with the fishgrips. Zack tries to steer it around the rocky shore, and somehow the hook pops off. Bye bye sharky lol. Well I'm happy the shark as released quickly but I definitly wanted a few measurements and an upclose picture. No choice but to estimate the length at this point, which I had several good looks at it. So I'll estimate it at least 3' long from nose to tip of tail.


Awhile later Zack gets another hit on the cutbait but it's only a small hardhead catfish. I finially get a good lick on my cutbait rod, and the fight was pretty good too. But mine ended up being a medium sized sailfin catfish.

We continued to jig and were productive with the Gulp brand. Zack caught a small panfish sized crevalle jack, a nice 15" fork bluefish, and a couple ladyfish. I found the Gulp Mantis Shrimp in New Penny to be deadly on the ladyfish. I was getting hits on every cast, I probably caught a half dozen and jumped way more. A slow retrieve with an occasional twitch seemed to draw the bites in. Keeping them on the hook is the trick. They often unbutton from the hook very quickly. I took home about 7-8 ladyfish for freezing bait. I also took home the small jack and the bluefish for bait. What I do is cut off the tails and just freeze the fish whole in a gallon-sized freezer bag. I cut the tails off so they'd fit in the ziplock bags easier. It works really well!

Thursday Night 4/18 - P.O. Flat Bridge

Took my neighbor and his friend out fishing last night to the flat bridge. These guys have never been fishing with me, so I had to show them a few techniques I use to catch em on the bridge. As soon as we arrived and walked out to our spot, you could feel the strong winds gusting in our faces. The wind was just too strong to throw a jig so I put those rods to the side. The only option at this point was using cutbait, which I brought some frozen ladyfish. Diced up some chunks and stuck them on some 5/0 circle hooks on three seperate rods. We were getting steady bites, some were actually moving the rod pretty good. Nothing was getting hooked though. My neighbors friend notices a tap and starts reeling in, we notice that he's tangled with our lines somehow. As he's reeling he says there's a fish on the other end, the whole time he's still tangled with other lines. We get one line free so now it's just two rods tangled. He gets the fish up to the surface and it was a nice shark! Probably about 2.5ft long. So now comes the moment of truth, getting the shark up on the bridge. Well, we got it about 2 feet above water and it decides to shake. We tried to lower it back in the water to relieve some of the tension, but it was too late. The teeth had sliced the line at the hook and the shark was gone. It was still a nice shark, I just wish I had a picture of it to share. Oh well thats fishing. We fished for awhile longer but that was the only fish of the night.

27 LB / 40" Black Drum - Edgewater Easter Night!

An evening trip to New Smyrna/Edgewater on the night of Easter with my buddy Zack. We started at the North Causeway in NSB looking for live bait, and didn't see anything. Plus the pier was crowded with fishermen. So we left there and decided to try Edgewater before we went home. At Edgewater, we first attempted to jig artificials. I used a tandem rig that had two 3" gulp swimming mullets and my first cast I immediately caught a small bluefish. After releasing him back in the water, I tried the tandem rig again but no more fish. I switched to a DOA nite glow shrimp and no hits. By then my frozen filet of crevalle jack meat was thawed. So I chunked it, hooked it, and tossed it out in the water. After a short soak, I got a good hit and felt a powerful fish on the end of the line. As the fish is making runs and pulling line off my reel, I'm looking at Zack like "is this for real?". LOL
A good 5-10 minute fight and I get it up closer to the dock. It was a bigass black drum, my personal best for sure. There's no way I'm lifting it over the rails so I gently manuever it to the boat ramp where we can just slide it up. By then, the fish was extremely tired. Here are my trophy photos :)