We wreck fished both Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday, we fished the Triangle Reef for big bluefish and flounder. We caught little bluefish, some medium sea bass, a few ribbon fish, and some flounder. The largest flounder was Jody Linthicum’s first-ever flounder citation and it was his sixth different citation this year, earning his Expert Angler award. His doormat weighed in at 8.5 pounds. While flounder fishing, Bernie Sparrer hooked something that was not a flounder. I thought that we had found the big bluefish until 10 feet of thresher shark comes flying out of the water. They are funny looking sharks anyway but they really look strange when flying. That fight did not last too much longer after that. The hook pulled.
Sunday, we fished some wrecks to the south. We caught hake, porgy and a bunch of small bluefish. We had a really nice catch of big sea bass, keeping our 75-fish limit and we caught a bunch of triggerfish. We weighed in three triggerfish for citations. Dr. Hamish Small caught the largest at 5 pounds. Stan Simmerman hooked something big on his sea bass rig that would not come up. He thought it was a monster ray. I told him that I thought he had a big sand tiger on. We never found out as he broke it off after a grueling fight. Stan switched over to a jig and he was soon hooked up to something big again. This time, he was able to bring the big sand tiger shark to the boat for a release. Wes Blow has a thing for catching big sharks. He put away his sea bass stuff and came out with a long and heavy piece of piano wire leader with a big hook on the end. He baited up with a big slab of false albacore and proceeded to show that you cannot have too big a bait or hook for a sea bass to eat. After catching a few sea bass on his oversized baits, he did hook up on a shark but the hook pulled. He kept at it and hooked another one. We ended up pulling off the anchor and chasing this one around a bit. When he finally got it up, we had that heavy straight-wire to deal with without any wireman’s gloves. They tried to lip-gaff the shark to aid in getting the hook out/cutting the leader close to the shark. That sort of worked. After the release, nobody else wanted to tangle with another one of those beast and fish box was full so we headed in for a couple of hours of fish cleaning.
