A Mother’s first saltwater fish could potentially qualify as an IFGA world record.
The day started out the same as any other summer morning. It was 7:30 A.M. and I was preparing my boat for a day of charter fishing. My first trip of the day was a family from Pennsylvania. When they arrived we began to make small talk on the docks. The group consisted of an Uncle, Mom (Leslie) and an eleven-year-old girl (Helen) who had just recently caught the fishing bug. I asked the family, what would you like to catch today. “Shark” was yelled out from the young girl before I could even finish my sentence. I then glanced over towards the Mom to hear her reply. “ It does not matter, but I would like to take a couple of fish home for dinner.” We then proceeded to accomplish the Mother’s goal of dinner. With some good luck this was fulfilled with a keeper Red Drum and a Flounder, that were both caught fishing mud minnows on an equalizer float near a submerged oyster bed.
Now it was time to try to fulfill her daughter’s request. I picked a small creek that feed into Hamlin Sound to try for a shark. We put out two heavy spinning rods off the stern of the boat. The rods were 20lb set-ups with 100lb mono leader with a blue crab on a circle hook. Early in the week we had boated two nice sharks and one healthy red fish at the same spot. To pass the time in between bites, I rigged up some Carolina rigs on some lite spinning gear, so they could play with some hungry bottom feeders. The first hook up on the lite rig was a good one. I watched Leslie’s rod begin to double over and the drag began to sing. This was no small red or whiting, so I pulled the anchor and we began to chase the fish. After seeing the bottom of the spool, I was glad to get the boat under way to retrieve some line. About 10 minutes later we got our first glimpse of the shark. Leslie followed all of my coaching very well, and after another 10 minutes we got the Bonnethead Shark into the boat. Once I boated the shark and we took some pictures, I asked Leslie