Fishing last Monday

Monday I fished for sharks with Aaron Snell. This was our third trip in three weeks, and if you keep up with the reports you know that the last two trips had been difficult.
We left at the same time, and discussed returning to the same area where we had fished the weeks before. Our first stop didn’t yield much bait for chum, and when we found the bait we were close enough to a different spot that we decided to make the run and see what we could find. This turned out to be a good decision.
We found some jacks on the surface when we arrived, and after a few hundred meters of drifting ended up with a few blacktip sharks circling our slick. Aaron teased in a few for me, though none would seal the deal. Finally, we had a fish that wanted to eat so badly that it tolerated three separate casts at it with our shark fly before eating the fly and screaming off.
Upon closer inspection when we got the fish next to the boat, we saw that the fish was missing its dorsal fin–either from a suitor or a predator, it had been bitten off:

We took the fish aboard for photos, estimating its weight at about 50 lbs:

Another drift and this time it was the lemon sharks that showed up en masse: I hooked a large one but the fly didn’t stick, and I had another bite from a blacktip that didn’t work out either. Soon, in the failing light, we hooked a nice lemon shark and landed it for photos (120-140 lbs est.):

A fantastic day on the water, to be sure, and one that capped the last few weeks beautifully. Thanks as always to Aaron getting it done.

ncl