Well, maybe not the largest fish anyone has seen inshore, but one of our hardest fighting. We went out at about noon to the upper wando to look for some reds, and they were lockjaw. We headed to our spot where we seem to always catch at least one red. We caught a blue crab on a minnow, so he instantly turned into bait. Got him into four pieces, and chucked one out there. A couple minutes later, it looks like a crab is committing cannibalism. My father picks up the rod, reels in a bit, and line is screaming out of the reel. We handed the rod to my mom who has not had a chance to feel the fight of good sized fish. This thing was STRIPPING LINE OFF THE REEL SO FAST. We thought for sure that it had to be a good sized red, possibly being one of the prized 40-50 inchers. We fight the thing for maybe 15 minutes and get our first glimpse of the so called massive redfish that was on the end of our line. We see dark grey and I thought “Oh my god really, another stupid ray?? Well at least they fight good…” But it didn’t look quite right, the wing of the ray was more of a triangle than the circle of a standard stingray that you catch. So then I thought to myself “Large shark possibly?” But it wasn’t right. The fish just couldn’t be a shark because the wing was flapping everywhere and there was no tail behind it. But then I remembered the comment one of you guys posted on my “Ray fooled me” post. It was our first cownose stingray! BTW the fight has been going on at about 20 minutes by now. This thing was just relentless and we could not get this ray to tire out. All of us had a turn fighting this thing. At 45 minutes we finally were able to settle this thing down with some force. We had to be forceful with this thing because it just would not give up. We tried to get it in the net, but I guess it is a good sign that you shouldn’t be bringing a stingray into the boat when it doesn’t fit in your net. I remembered your story about getting stung by a ray, Bugs, so I did not feel very good about bringing a big stingray into the
That’s awesome RiverMonster, congrats!!! Hope I can catch something that big when we go out!!!
very nice! thats one reason i dont mind catching rays when im just doing catch and release…always a fun fight! 
i can also say ive witnessed crab cannibalism on many accounts that one didnt suprise me one bit!
We catch plenty of those on the Pamlico Sound in NC while fishing for big drum. They fight like crazy and there’s plenty of them around, which helps to keep the kids interested if the good fish aren’t cooperating