Leo on the 4th

[LONGCAST JOE]

Hit the VC for a couple days over the holiday weekend. Did alot of lightlining which I'll put up on SC if I get the chance, but PS always comes first  ...
It was warm enough out and I had enough beers in me to decide to paddle/kick a bait out on a boogie board about 250 yards. After I had kicked out a couple hundred yards and looked down at the whole fresh mack in my hand dripping a trail of blood into the water it then struck me this might not be the brightest of ideas...During the day, iffy at best, at night time, no frickin way...I'll talk someone else , like Chad, into doing that for me 
Anyways, got a whole mack dropped and set on my rod without any disasters and let it sit. Finding out what that bow in the line is that Chris had mentioned as well... I think I let it soak almost 2 hours until I saw it getting some action. It seemed like it fiddled with it for over a minute before it finally started to run away with it so I was thinking it was probably going to be a friggin bat ray, so i was happy when I felt some head shakes or tail slaps being dulley transmitted through the stretch of 250 yards of mono. After a bit it came straight at me for a good 150 yards as I could barely keep up with it reeling almost as fast as I could. i then caught site of its dorsal instead of a whippy bat tail and I was happy. Next challenge was to land it from some big mossy boulders without any sand left to work with. Picked a good looking gap and got it slid up into into it on my first try. Laid my rod down and I layed down and went for the tail grab. Success, job done...Excuse the pics as I had to edit them out of some Gopro video as it was too long of a haul up the rocks back to get my cell phone for pics...
Oh, it taped out at just 53" but it was a fun catch and my first on a paddled out bait...

[vdisney]

[xjchad]

You're crazy Joe lol!
Gonna take a lot more than a couple beers to get me to paddle around on a boogie board dragging a bloody mac around!
Nice Leo!

[SevengillTheVC]

I always thought that spot looked good. Just didn't want to deal with a big grinner on those rocks. Way to go on the leo Joe!

[Latimeria]

Great shot of the leo teeth!

It's funny what a couple of beers will make a person do.  lol