Tuesday Night Pre-Storm Session

[1morecast]

After hearing about the multi-shark sessions as of late and the forecast of storms later this week I decided to get in a surf fishing session in.
As I'm gearing up for the trip I can see it's starting to rain at my house. It was a light rain, more of a heavy mist then a down pour, so I decide to bring a rain poncho and go for it. When I get to the spot it's stopped misting, so things are looking up. I setup and have a bait in the water by 8pm. About 15 minutes later Rasta shows up and sets up north of me. The surf conditions are decent, not much surge and minimal salad. Rasta gets a nice take down and he screams that he's on. He makes short work of a juvenile 7gill (68") with not much effort. Tom shows up out of the darkness to take a look see. 


As I am sand handing the 7gill for Rasta my reel goes off. This fish takes about half of my line in no time. I lock down the drag and hope it doesn't spool my little reel. (25lb main line.  ) After about 5 minutes the shark starts to come in and I make steady progress getting line back. When the shark get close we can see it's a thick Soupie. We get a tape and pic of this shark and it measure out at 64" female.


I made sure water flows across her gills for a few minutes and she swims off on the next incoming tide. Pinoyfisher shows up in the middle of the mayhem and setup north of Rasta. He's getting critter bites and lands a sandbass, but I didn't get to see it. About 30 minutes go by and Pinoyfisher is tired of getting all of the critters, so he relocates south of me. To our dismay he discovers the soupie that I had caught earlier had beached herself. It was clear that she had been out of the water for a while and we couldn't revive her. So we decided to harvest her. In the process of gutting the fish we discovered she was carrying about 20 fry that still had their yoke sac attached. (I would guess they needed another two weeks to reach full development) We put the fry into the surf to give them a chance to make it, but they probably became dinner to some bass or hali. 

Nothing was wasted and I even kept the jaws to make into a cool plaque that we could use for our 2018 shark contest. Anyone know how to best remove all the flesh off the jaw bones?

Bitter sweet night for sure.   

[Pinoyfisher]

Bummer I was late to the party. I definitely have some ground to make up. Finding that soupie on the sand sucked. She wasn't wasted. Our first one to not make it 

[BenCantrell]

The sharks are biting!  Bummer about the beached soupfin.  It makes me nervous that one of these nights it will happen and we won't realize it.

[sasquatch]

Looked at that spot. Seemed weedy. Made another choice. Oops.

Bummer on the unintended demise. We have had a couple wash up but caught them in time. Now we scan the surf line for awhile after a release.

[1morecast]

I found out how to preserve the shark jaws for the plaque. http://www.instructables.com/id/Preserving-Shark-Jaws/
Does this sound right?

[vdisney]

Congrats guys on a two fish night.........bummer about the wash up. 

[j.rasta]

Good times despite the loss of the big girl :/ saved the meat atleast, and from what I've read they're pretty good table fare. See y'all tomorrow night!

Rastafar-gone B<==*~~

[Latimeria]

That's one problem of using lighter line.  You tire them out more and if you don't spend time with them or keep checking that they don't wash up then there will be more.  Hmm, between you using light line and Josh taking a million pictures over the health of a shark, I'm not counting these two to the list.  Done...






(hahahahaha, I was only partly kidding.  I'll get them on the list here soon.)

Good catches guys!  I bet I surprised the hell out of you appearing out of the dark. Josh is on a 2017 Mike sized tare this season!

[Pinoyfisher]

Ouch. Hahaha!!