So my son and I have been here on Seabrook for the past 2 weeks. We headed over to Haddrell’s on West Ashley when we got here and they sold us a couple of Penn Battle Reels and 8’ Aerial rods. The reels have been great but the rods have had problems with the cork wrapping coming off around the butt and I"m gonna take them back later this morning. Anyway, we’ve had our best luck early in the morning (6am-8am) on the Edisto River beach down near Privateer Point. No reds, but we’ve hooked up with some nice bonnet heads (see pics below) and some real big cownose rays (those are actually a pain in the butt because it’s real hard to get the hook out, but still fun for a 12 year old to reel in!). We’ve been catching blue crabs right on the beach and my son just chopping them into knuckle chunks for bait - cheap and effective! Other than the sharks and rays, we’ve caught a bunch of small whiting, some pampano, and also a large sea turtle (oops). The extra high tides and fast currents last week definitely caused some problems.
Questions: What do we need to do to hook up with reds from the beach? Not much grass around there. We’ve got two more days and would love to land one or two.
Also, we’re having a situation where a lot of the bonnet heads are breaking off once we get them into the real shallow water and they start thrashing around. We’re using two-hook bottom rigs and 30-lb braided line. My son thinks that the line is getting cut by the shark skin when they start thrashing. Do we need to use a wire leader? If so, what type and how long? Any other suggestions?
And what’s the best way to get the hook out of a big stingray??? Those things scare the crap out of me!
Yes, use a steel leader if you are losing lots of bonnets. It may actually be their teeth, or it could be their thrashing and wallowing around in the sand and shells.
Preferably use a piano-wire type single strand leader, not the multistrand/braided stuff (it will work, but isn’t as resilient against teeth).
As for reds, you need to look for structure and use something like whole shrimp, mud minnows, finger mullet, or fiddler crabs. Cut mullet fillets can also work well.
for big rays: flop em on their back by the head end so the belly is exposed and the stinger will be pointed into the sand and position your body at the head end. the stinger on a cownose ray in pretty high up on the tail if i remembe right so your channce of getting stung handling it from the head end is much lower. the actual stinger can be easily clipped with a pair of pliers without harming the ray as well.
I hate it when people talk about clipping the stinger off of a ray and then releasing the ray. what happens is you send a ray back out with no defense against other fish. If you are going to do that keep the ray.
I used to use wire all the time landing small sharks like these on spinning gear. No longer. For a few years I’ve been using my standard 50 lb. mono rig and have had about 90-95% land %. I simply tie three overhand knots in 50 lb. mono. One at the top for the snap swivel, one in the middle to create the hanging hook loop and one at the bottom to loop thru the sinker. It’s a great rig. Simpel as can be and you can change out hook/sinker sizes without re-tying anything.
The 50 is plenty stout enough for any of these 3-4 footers. Just make it about 2-3 ft. long to keep it from getting frayed by the tail. If you keep contant pressure on the shark and keep the rod tip up when he’s in the surf, the hook will stay in the corner of the mouth and without slack he won;t get tangled or have any slack to get into his mouth. Ofcourse circle hooks are the way to go for this as they force themselves into the corner of the mouth. My girls catch all kinds of sharks from 3-10 ft. and for the smaller ones they have no problems landing them on single hook mono rigs in the surf. Mono at 50 lb. is also ample size to grab and tow a small shark in thru the shallows. Hope this helps.
Rob
President, Founder
Atlantic Shark Angling Club
Est. 1983
I’m with Steven. Don’t cut the barb off. Are you pulling all the teeth out of a sharks mouth before you pull the hook out? Learn to handle them safely like you would a shark.
Now, if you’ll excuse me… I have to go pull these quills out of this porcupine so we can feed it… lol
Steve
quote:Originally posted by bee
next time I’ll cut your line! I’m there to relax and enjoy fishing. Don’t be a donkey.
