Florida!!!

[fishcast]

I made some posts earlier with questions about Florida got some help, and here is a report! We were down in the lower keys by the way. This is a few weeks late on the post, but we fished for 3 days in the middle of march. Wasn't really sure what to expect but we had a 16 foot flats boat to use....

The first thing we saw on the flat while pulling up was a massive shark "sharking" through the shallows which kind of forecasted the trip for us.

Right off the bat we were nailing fish, we were throwing those goofy tube lures for barracudaas that go through the water kind of like a swimming worm rig for bass. We caught a number of cudas and had tons of follows and misses from them and sharks.

Here is a cuda a friend of mine caught. Most caught on MH gear with 30lb braid, but one on a fly rod.

Shark fishing is not hard at all. Catch some small cudas. Fillet them open and put them on a stringer behind the boat and let the chum go out towards a deeper channel. They are pretty obvious almost all the time. By obvious I mean a dorsal fin out of the water and a large wake coming straight at the boat!

We caught a number of these sharks which I think are dusky sharks..if anyone knows for sure let me know. But these guys are abundant and run really fast, and are a ton of fun. And by the way we caught all our sharks on pretty much on MH spinning equipment with 30lb braid and muskie gear with 65lb braid and like 4-5 ft of 80lb wire with a 7/0 circle hook using a cut piece of cuda.

flats, mangroves, and shark bait.

The first night we saw a hammerhead that was no kidding as long as our 16ft bait, and nosed up to our bait! When it came waking in, it was absolutely nutz!!!! Maybe it was a good thing we didn't hook it cause it might have taken half a day to land....

Here is a shot of about an 8-10ft hammerhead we caught. Right before this we had about a half dozen hammerheads sharking in on us! One waked in and ate my friends fly but didn't get hooked.

50 minutes after being hooked and chased down here it is!!

This was one of a few nurse sharks caught. They are real abundant around there. I think they are more like sturgeon than sharks they way they act. I think they eat mostly crabs and have like barbels. They don't run as good, but this one took over an hour to land with 30lb braid and a MH muskie rod. We actually had to motor in shallow and reach down and yank its tail out for this pic cause we couldn't move it off bottom.

This is "kayakman" on the site with after a fun fight!

He also hooked a spinner shark out of a yak that broke him off. If you don't know how they jump look it up on you tube, its insane! After taking his bait and about 20 seconds he was pulled about 50 yards with the shark 75 yards ahead of him. Then it decided to jump 3 times in a row! and each time they jump they barrel roal about 3 complete revolutions!! I think it had the leader wrapped so much that as it fell back into the water it snapped it...by the way it was probably a 6 footer..

By the way there were a number of tarpon around. Didn't catch any but had a very large one follow a 12" flashobou fly I had been tossing for cuda for atleast 20ft before turning. One time I saw like 6 sunning in like 2ft of water while watching about a 3 sharks circling our boat. Suprisingly saw zero bonefish, and just a few permit. Hight tides on the flat were much better fishing by the way which is noticeable after fishing there over a couple days.

[hound32]

awsome report, looks like fun! i love the fishing down there, there are so many species to try and catch. thoes cudas put up a fight on spining gear thats forsure.