First Day Fishing...

I opted out of an invitation by friends to do some kayak fishing today in order to catch up on some much needed sleep. I hit the surf instead, caught a few fish and even had an adventure of sorts. I was fishing 2/0 circle hooks with frozen shrimp, hoping to catch a few whiting or perhaps a pompano or two. After putting a couple of whiting on the stringer I got an odd hit, more of a sustained pull than a tug or nibble. I set the hook using the circle hook technique and suddenly found myself firmly snagged. I pulled back on the 12’ Ugly Stik as hard as possible followed by snaps of the rod, trying to free it. I couldn’t figure out what was going on here since I was fishing a sand beach with no apparent bottom obstructions. After a few minutes of this I walked down the beach 100 feet or so to get a different angle on the snag. I pulled again a few times with no apparent effect. Suddenly, my line felt free and the ‘snag’ started swimming away. Holy crap, this was a fish and a big one. An exciting aspect of fishing in the ocean is that you have no idea what has taken your bait when that big one takes off. The runs were powerful but short and it likely didn’t take longer than 10 minutes to beach my catch. I had caught an Atlantic stingray estimated to be 2 feet across and later research suggested this is as big as they get. I couldn’t turn it over and ended up just cutting off the hook and eventually coaxed it back into the Gulf. What a thrill that was! Unfortunately the camera operator hadn’t come down yet so pictures aren’t available. Why did it feel so solid at first? My theory is the ray dug into the sand on first feeling the hook and when I pulled straight forward it was...just stuck in the sand. When I later changed the angle of pull, I was able to pull it sideways out of the sand. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

 

So how many fish did I catch in total? As the Nordic God says “enough to stink up a fry pan” . And that turns out to be a perfect amount since I’ll have to go out fishing again tomorrow to collect the next meal.