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!
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