Land Based Shark Fishing

[HBT Chris]

I know the section is called "Off the Water" but I figured I would throw this in the Hobbies section. Technically, when we are fishing, we are on the beach a majority of the time, and the only time we're on the water is when we are putting baits out. So, I think this counts as "Off the Water" :lol:

Earlier this year a friend of mine got married. Well before the wedding, he was over at my place, along with a couple other friends, and we were discussing a bachelor party. Not too long before that I had stumbled onto a website dedicated to shark fishing from the beach, and the bug bit me. I had already bought a rod and reel, spooled it up with 80lb line, and spent every day just looking at it, wondering if I would ever actually get to use it. Well, as we are all discussing a bachelor party, one of the guys notices the reel, and all of a sudden everyone is checking out this beast (9/0 senator). After some talking, and showing a few pictures of big sharks being caught from the beach, the decision is made that this bachelor party will be taking place on Jekyll Island, and we will be shark fishing.

After a lot of planning, and even more excitement, we finally made our trip to the coast and it was awesome. Considering we had no idea what we were doing, we still managed to catch and release some pretty big sharks and a monster sting ray. On top of that, we caught countless small sharks, whiting, catfish and smaller sting rays. It was a great trip, and the shark fishing bug bit just about everyone in the group.

Fast forward to a month ago, and we were headed down for our second trip. With more and bigger rods, and a better idea of what we were doing, everyone thought this trip was going to be even better. Boy were we wrong! We did manage 1 smaller shark around 6ft, and a bunch of really small ones, but never did hook up with the true man eater we were after. Needless to say we were a bit disappointed, but I think it just makes the desire to get back for redemption even greater.

For those who have never seen/heard of this, we use really large penn senator reels, that hold a minimum of 500 yards of line. Currently we have 2 9/0 senators and a 14/0 in our arsenal. The baits range anywhere from a whole bonita or sting ray to baracuda and any other fish we can come across at the tackle stores/charter boat docks. We will tie a rock to the line using 20lb monofiliment (so when the shark bites, the mono breaks and there is no weight on the line) then use a kayak to paddle the bait out 200 - 300 yards and set it in the ocean. The moment a shark grabs the bait is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. You never know what kind of shark will hit, and if you will be in for a 15 minute battle or a 2 hour one. Having bass fished my entire life, this is something that I am really falling in love with. I don't know if it's the added danger, excitement or just because it is different, but I can say that it is quite a rush to paddle a kayak 300 yards off the beach at 2am with a big dead fish in the back of it, knowing there are sharks lurking all over.

Here are a few pictures from our last two trips. My wife came on one, and she is actually a pretty good photographer, so some of the shots are kind of artsy, but still cool to look at!

The crew, minus my wife:

Some of the rays we have caught:

Our biggest reel, a 14/0 senator:

Me tying on a rock for weight:

Our Kayak:

Heading out to drop a bait:

Setup and waiting:

A few of the sharks we've caught:

Our biggest shark so far, slightly over 7ft:

 

[fool4fish1226]

Cool, I have shark fished from the beach many time lots of fun. I like when the morning beach people show up and ask you were you caught the shark at and you tell them right here, their faces are priceless :beer:

 

[HBT Chris]

Cool, I have shark fished from the beach many time lots of fun. I like when the morning beach people show up and ask you were you caught the shark at and you tell them right here, their faces are priceless :beer:

:lol: I think my two favorite things so far have been when people walk by and comment about how big the reels are (always make me chuckle) and also seeing peoples faces when they ask what you caught the Bonita on, and you tell them it's actually what you are using for bait. :lol:

 

[Captain Ahab]

Nice job - friends of mine just finished doing a shark survey for DE Dept. of Nat. Resources where they shark fished from teh various beaches. Managed to catch two really nice Tiger Sharks as well as numerous dusky, brown and sand tigers as well. No Bulls but they are around this time of year as well

Did you get any spinner sharks? Awesome leaps and jumps from them

 

[HBT Chris]

No spinners yet. From the best we can tell, we have only caught bulls and lemons for the bigger sharks. I would love to catch a spinner though on some of our smaller spinning gear. I think that would be a blast. Right now we are tying to come up with a way to have a bait suspend off the bottom, but still be anchored. Where we fish the current is unreal, so it present a challenge in itself, but I've read that certain species like the baits off the bottom and others like it on the bottom. It would be neat to try and test out the theory.

The last trip it seemed like you could throw a piece of squid on the bottom, and within a minutes would have a bonnet head or some other small shark.

 

[Captain Ahab]

Some of teh guys I know use a big styfoam float to get the bait off the bottom. In current you will have to make sure your float does not spin or you will just have a mess

Sea Striker makes one

https://www.seaisletackle.com/browse.cfm/4,3159.html


You can use this underwater or drift fish it

 

[Jim]

Some local die hards do that up here also. Hardcore! :beer:

Always wondered how you got the bait out there...........

 

[Jim]

Great pictures bythe way! I couldnt take a nice shot of anything to save my life. :LOL2:

 

[HBT Chris]

Thanks Capt. I will have to pick up a couple of those and see what we can rig up.

Jim, I wish I could take credit for them, but it's my wife :lol: We are about to head to the FLW Cup show so maybe she will bring the camera and snap a few pictures there as well.

 

[Bailey Boat]

Back in my saltwater days we used a lot of balloons. If we wanted the bait suspended we would tie the lighter line to whatever we were using for weight and then allow enough for it to reach bottom and then tie a balloon further up the main line to suspend the bait at whatever depth we wanted.
Contrary to popular belief most sharks prefer to feed in the mid depth range rather than directly on the bottom.