South Pier 5/9/07

By: Pucky Mood: Happy Date: May 10, 2007 Music: The Beatles

It was a long day of running errands and making 3 trips to Southeastern before I actually made it to the North pier at around 5:30PM.  No luck with any bait there so Karl, his girlfriend (Cherry) and I headed over to the South Pier.

 We found AquaFinatic fishing in the corner of the end of the pier and hbn12341513 sleeping in the car.  Hbn managed 1 mackerel and threw the net for us.  He landed some HUGE greenbacks.  The biggest i've seen in a long time... as long as my hand and 2-3inches high.  I wanted to move to another spot right away while this bait was fresh. 

 I grabbed the biggest greenback i could find and put it on a 7/0 hook and dropped it down to be freelined out.  The wind was strong and kept a big curve in my line.  I saw the line start to straighten out real quick so i tried to set the hook before i felt the pressure but nothing was there. 

 I then started letting line out and not paying attention.  About 10min later, I looked down to see that the line wasn't moving with the tide anymore and the bait was no more than 20 feet from the pier!  From passed experience i learned that meant one of 2 things... either i was rocked or a grouper was holding onto my bait.  I started to slowly reel in the slack to not spook a grouper that could be on the other end. As soon as i felt the tiniest bit of pressure, I lifted the rod tip high to set the hook (even though i didnt know if anything was on the hook yet) and started cranking hard.  I felt something really heavy on the other end but no idea if it was a fish yet.

ALOT of line was still in the rocks! I started reeling faster and pumping the rod up and down as the weight on the other end started to get heavier.  Aqua was right next to me and I told him i think i have a fish!  We both looked over the rail to see what it was because it was coming up fast!  It came to the surface for a brief moment when he had a second wind and pulled a little bit of line on my saltist.  I cranked him back out of the water and reeled him straight up to the rail and flipped him over. 

 As we're all staring at it a guy comes out of nowhere and asks, "WHOA!! What is that??"

 We took the measurement at 28" and immediately got some ice for the cooler.  After that I looked at my topshot (125lb berkley big game) and realized how much it was frayed up.  I ended up having to trim off about 20-25ft of line that was all chewed up from the rocks. 

 Later in the night we decided to try for shark.  Got 2 hits but 0 hookups. 

 Next shark fishing attempt will be friday!