Protected Species Report 6/18

[Farmer_Joey]

Since things have been slow around here I thought I'd post about something different than the typical soupfin and sevengills. Fished with one of my buddies that has a drone last weekend and had a pretty productive night but only with the tax man.

We got to the beach around sunset and setup while we waited for the crowds to thin out. By nine we had flown all our baits out and conditions were actually surprisingly good. Only 1 rod was getting affected by current and none of us caught any grass.

Just after 10pm my rod goes off screaming with the first biter of the night. The entire fight was me straight winding this fish to the beach until it was in the surf and we see why, it's a baby tax man. The thing wasn't even 6ft and it was on a 50w with 130lb braid so no fight at all. Kept it in the water and got it released, no pictures taken of this one.

About an hour later at around 11, my friends rod takes off with the next biter. This was a bigger fish and on lighter tackle so it was a longer fight. Once we got it in skinny water we saw it was another tax man at right around 8ft. Same process as the previous fish, kept it in the water and no photos but I got a release video of it

Sometime around midnight my friend gets another biter but the hook pulled shortly after he started fighting it. The cable wasn't chafed and the bait had no teeth marks on it so our guess is black sea bass.

Around 1am he gets another screamer and this was definitely a serious fish. He fought this one for close to half an hour before the fish started running north and his braid got cut off on something. Would have been cool to see this one because it would have been a really nice fish

Right as my friends gets done winding in from the cut off, his other rod gets bit but it drops the bait and as that one spits the bait, my rod gets slammed and then goes slack. I pick it up and wind as fast as i can to get tight with it and when I do, the fish makes a huge run against really tight drag and starts dragging towards the water. Thankfully my friend and my dad both grabbed me and helped me sit down to fight it since we had no harness. This fish took a really long first run against some serious drag so after that I knew this was going to be a double digit fish. Fought this one for a good 30+ or so minutes on the heavy tackle before we got it into skinny water. We couldn't believe the girth of this fish when we all first saw it. One of the fattest fish I've seen. Length on this one was somewhere around 10.5ft. Got some pictures of the release but they didn't come out very good at all.

Packed it up right after we released that one around 2 am. Probably left them biting but I had work the next morning and had already worked an 8 hour shift and went straight to the beach to fish. Total for the night was 5 fish hooked and 3 landed. First one under 6ft, next one about 8ft and the last one about 10.5ft. All on short drops too, 150 or so yards from shore. Surprised my dad didn't get bit but he has had a decent streak of luck so he can take a break.

But hopefully I'll have some more soupfins or maybe even a sevengill to post for you guys soon since you have all retired from fishing.

[Latimeria]

Wow, Nicely done!  It wasn't too long ago that only a handful of GW's were even known about or around. Just reading about people having 5 hook up nights... I can't believe how much the fishery has changed!

Congrats boss and thanks for the write up, really good read!

[Farmer_Joey]

Wow, Nicely done!  It wasn't too long ago that only a handful of GW's were even known about or around. Just reading about people having 5 hook up nights... I can't believe how much the fishery has changed!

Congrats boss and thanks for the write up, really good read!

Thank you! And there a LOT of whites around now and have been for the last few years. Very common bycatch on dropped baits. They'll bite when fishing a floated bait for thresher, and bottom baits of any size or at any distance for soupfin or sevengill. I'm surprised we don't see more on the casted baits.

Also forgot to mention that I went back two nights later with another friend and got wrecked by a massive kelp stringer and awful current for the short time we were there. Not fun

[vdisney]

We were never talented enough to put one on the sand, but a few years ago we hooked into 26 GW's in 3 days hand casting.  Only one of us was good enough to put one on the sand, and we all know who that was   

[jrodda]

That is wild. 10.5' is a lot of white.