Wreck Fishing

We went wreck hopping yesterday. With us was US Congressman, Rob Wittman. He was freshly back from the Middle East. He said that some time there will make you really appreciate the country that we have. He also said that it is hard for us to understand how difficult a job it is that we are asking our young men and women in the military to do over there and what an amazing job they are doing.

We had a good day on the water and caught a bunch. We caught a limit of jumbo sea bass, at least 3 species of jacks, 3 flounder, 2 tautog (20 inches), 2 gag grouper, and all the bluefish we could handle. The bluefish were so thick that it was hard to get down to the wreck. We also hooked up a number of big sand tiger sharks. They kept eating our little baits. The Congressman got to do battle with a couple. The first ended with a broken rod. He had his second on for a long time after the shark ate his Lucanus Jig. Eventually, those little hooks failed. All of the shark battles ended with cut offs/break offs/pull offs except for one that Stan Simmerman hooked on a diamond jig. He managed to get that one to the boat. It had his jig with my bottom rig tangled in it plus some older line from a previous encounter. The smart thing would have been to cut the line but Rob wanted to free the shark of all of this stuff so he grabbed some pliers and went to work. I grabbed my camera. In my excitement to get a photo of a Congressman getting his hand bitten off by a shark, I accidently switched the camera to manual focus. So, the shark photos are not as clear as they should be but I did not miss “the shot” as Rob successfully removed all of the hooks without losing an appendage.

This actually was a triggerfish trip. Wes Blow has gotten it into his mind that it is time to set the state record. So we were after triggers and everything else was just by-catch. I don’t know how many triggerfish we caught but it was a bunch. We got some nice ones but no state record…yet.

In total, we registered eight trophy fish citations. Congressman Wittman weighed in both our largest triggerfish and largest sea bass. Stan Simmerman registered the most citations with his shark release and weighing in 3 citation triggerfish.