At long last I got my beauty

This afternoon after work I decided to slide a bait out at Mosselbay. Arriving there I met two of the locals already fishing.
The water color was perfect with the swell not too flat or too dead. While we stood around telling fishing tales and jokes Maruis bait got picked up, He was onto something big.
After a few minutes he tried hard to turn the shark but it just went straight out to sea and snapped his line.


He decided to call it a day and packed up. Just after he left Andre hooked into something big too. At first we thought he is into a stingray because it did not fight much and was just dead weight.
To our surprise we saw it was a very nice ragged tooth shark.
I help him to get it out the water onto the rocks,took a pic or two and released her again.

That shark just got me very exited. I decided to slide one more bait, seeing I had to take my line out when Andre got his hook up.

First I had to fight my slide trace ,with bonito tail on, from the harbor cats. I got it back mostly in one piece. I hooked my slide on and Andre said that he will wait a few minutes before he heads home.
We stood there talking while I'm shaking my rod to get my bait out. Suddenly it flt like my bait is getting very heavy. I stopped shaking and felt something pulling steady but slowly on my line.

Suddenly the thing pulling my bait sped of and I just lift my rod to set the hooks. The fight started fast. Shark taking line, me winning some back. After a back breaking 45 minutes I landed this pregnant female ragged tooth shark.




It was quite a mission to land this lady because my head lamp's battery died and Andre does not see well in the dark at all.
To top it off I had the wrong shoes on for rocks and I forgot my fight buckle at home. Thank you Andre for putting yours on me.
Full length is approximately 2.4 meters.
Precaudal length 2.15m with which the weight is worked out at 179.66kg(394 pound)
I'm still searching to find a more accurate estimate for the weight. I think it will be heavier cause that was a very fat pregnant female.

Anyways, I need to go rest now. Muscles aching from a great evenings fishing.

Guess I'll have some nice dreams tonight

Random pictures of what happened in summer

Busy with a small bronze whaler shark.











Had loads of fun with these size coming out every cast.


Smooth Hound shark at night.




Got a few of them casting out live mullet.































A sandshark I got and swam out as live bait. Got a nice run on it but no hook up. Got it out and the sandy was ripped to pieces.












Another nice hound shark.

And releasing it.

Good Bye Summer

So far I still seem to have some bad luck in getting the BIG ONE.
In between everything I did manage to get some time for fishing and landed a few smaller sharks and lots of edible fish(cob,shad and grunter).
At least my son is walking now and he just loves the ocean. On this trip to the beach I took him with and he could not stay away from my fishing rod(PROUD GRIN)







The next day he was busy playing with my reel when this hound shark picked up the bait and ran. Soon he will be catching them with dad.
For now I'm waiting for him to start catching the bait fish for the sharks.





Last Monday I headed down to Mosselbay again to see if the ragged tooth sharks are on the bite already.
I was still busy sliding out a whole mackerel when I felt a tug on the line.

Suddenly the tug became a strong pull as the slide hit my stop ring and I was on with something.

After a few minutes I landed this hammerhead shark. I think it must have fed on squid just before I caught it because after removing the hook everything was covered in black ink.

Further I had some nice pick ups while sliding bigger baits but sadly no hook ups. I heard that there are raggies starting to come out on that spot at night so I will be spending a few evenings there. At least work is back to normal and I have more time to spend fishing again.