Spent the day with my buddy Carl, aka the shark slayer, on the Sunglow Pier in Daytona Beach. The day started out fast and maintained for most of the day.
We arrived at around 7:00am and on my first cast with my Ambassador rig, before I could relax there was a small tug on the line. I reeled in some line and felt a nice tug. After a quick, but spirited fight, I landed an 11” blue runner. Not much competition for my Ambassador, but fun none-the-less.
First cast of my spinning reel resulted in much the same. A quick hit and short and spirited. A 11” whiting comes over the rail! While unhooking the whiting the clicker starts to sing on my Ambassador again!
Setting the whiting free I begin another short battle that lacked the spunk of the previous 2. Once I got a look at the fish I realized why, it was a tiny pup bonnet head shark. The larger versions of this shark are quite a fun fight, but the little pups are often lazy and weak, and this one was only around 12”.
Carl finally got into the action with his first fish. A Long Nose Shark pup. He then followed that up with a small blue fish and a bonnet head shark. We then took turns landing fish for the next hour or two in about the same order. A few whiting here and there and a lot of pup sharks.
Then Carl’s bait runner starts to scream. He sets the hook and the fish starts a nice long run. After about 1-2 minutes of running the fish turns around and heads right back at him. He keeps up with it and gets a good look at what appears to be a 3 ½ foot long bonnet head. The Shark then turns and cuts his 20lb leader that he had set up for catching pompano.
Just a few minutes after Carl calms down I notice there is a lot of slack in my Ambassadors line. I reel it in and feel a slight bump and the line starts to run towards me. I keep up with it and as soon as I get ahead of the fish and it feels pressure it takes off on its first of 3 runs.
On the second run I get a peak at the fish and it is another nice size bonnet head. After fighting the shark for 15 minutes we get it netted and on to the pier. It measures out at 41” and is estimated to be around 10-15lbs.
The rest of the day continues with the whiting and sharks. Carl once again gets a good hook up with a large fish only to have it break his line off again, but that was the end of the excitement. The rest of the day was very slow so we decided to call it a day at around 2pm.
Finally Tally:
- Whiting: 12 (up to 14”)
- Bonnet Head Sharks: 21 (up to 41”) Carl had the lions share of sharks
- Sharp Nose Sharks: 3 (up to 26”)
- Blue Fish: 1
- Blue Runner: 1
- Large Fish Lost: 2