Was great to get out on the Sea Hawk and officially break in my new XL Rods custom spinning bucktail rod. Joined by the wife and my uncle.
Took a lil getting used to the new rod as I've been using another that had different action. Conditions didn't help much either at first as we were like in a washing machine. Fishing a Spro glow 1oz with 4" Gulp SM in chartreuse. First fish to get hooked is a 3lb blue. Next some shorts and sea robins.
Headed out towards hook and drift was a bit too fast for the 1oz so switched to my conventional bucktail'n stick and 3oz Spro w/ teaser. Plenty of shorts on the teaser and felt I flap-jacked a decent fish on the jig.
A couple nice keepers around 4.5+5# came up so went to dragging bait as we had some nice smelts and fresh peanut bunker. Theresa and my uncle were catching shorts but no keepers for us yet. Had a good bite on the smelt but no hook up and even had a stinger hook on the rig. Captain made another move and this drift felt more manageable. Went back to the new spinner and started getting more shorts with the solo 1oz Spro. Threw on a trimmed down pink/white 6" Gulp power grub and WHAM! get stopped. Rod set the hook nicely and fish felt pretty good. See it's outline and call for the net. Nice fluke maybe half-ounce short of 5# and a pool contender at the time.
More shorts and then my uncle hooked into a 40-50# cownose ray. Made two nice runs but we made short work of it. I took the rod over after it made a run from the stern to bow and needed to be a lil quick to avoid the other lines. Got it boatside and the mate gaffed the bucktail hook and popped it right off. Nice efficient release by mate Jesse
We only had the one keeper and ended up just missing out on the pool. A couple had 3 fish with the wife getting the 5# even top fish.
A nice night out with decent action. Just had to dry out a bit as the rain was fierce for the first half hour or so. Cleared up to be a nice cool evening.
