Folly beach big red by accident

Fished from about 9am to 1am and landed a 13in blue a 11in whiting and a 15in red, and about a 50 inch red. It was caught on a shark rig about 500yds out and it barely even fought. Either he has been caught before or just knows when he is beat because he only tugged a few times throughout the whole like 10 minute reel in. So I took a quick photo of it with my pops to make sure my phone was on camera and plus my pops would love to have it. All the photos he took of me were pretty much duds. I had shrimp and finger mullet for bait to work the food chain for shark but it didn’t go well. I didn’t catch any sharks I did 3 drops the finger mullet first 500yds big red, the blue 400yds picked clean and never saw the hit, and the third was the whiting about 200 yds off and I had a good hit similar to the big red so I don’t think it was a shark but I missed it, it may have been a big ray. The conditions were overcast and sunny mixed with small slow waves, less than 5mph onshore winds, no side to side current and fished mid incoming to lower mid outgoing on the backside of the sand bar the top and the trough, the small red was caught on the sand bar, the whiting was behind and the blue was in the trough. I didn’t surf fish actively bit for maybe an hour combined throughout the day, between all other stuff but there was never a solid bite and it seemed a bit slow in general today. The big red was out the water for about 40 seconds, shook out my arms, fell on his head at the waters edge, a wave came and he swam out from a inch of water strong healthy and slow just like he came in. Oh yeah its real hard to hold a 30 lb red fish (he was skinny) soaking wet after reeling it in 500yds. pic coming soon.

Thats a long outing. It’s great your pop was with you for such a special fish. Gonna have to change your name to 50inch reds:smiley:

Sorry for the error 9 am to 1pm. I so wish it was him who caught it his biggest is a 27inch in the late 90’s, he would of been thrilled. One of my fishing goals this year is to put him on one in the 40s. This is my third or fourth in the fifties and this might break into my top 5 overall even though it is in the top five for sure in length. I’ve caught reds close to this in size but double in girth. It didn’t look unhealthy it just wasn’t a barrel like some of the big ones. This is probably my first over 25 in like 2 years but I don’t big bass fish like I use to.

Thats awesome!

No matter how many variables I have control over, I never expect a bite. I only hope.

Pardon my ignorance, but how are you getting baits 500 yds out? I don’t know of many reels that can hold that type of line, but I may be missing something obvious. Thanks

@TRS
Hes using a kayak to paddle baits out that far while using a big conventional deep sea reel. A lot of them hold over 1,200 yards of braided line easily.