We then headed into deeper water with calm seas ahead.
We hit some rocky bottom on the way out in about 40' and picked up a nice flounder, but mostly were harassed by squirrelfish, so we put a few of those in the livewell, and headed on further. Once we got our destination, we were greeted by a HUGE hammerhead swimming by the boat. I'm guessing he was 8' to 9'? I was worried we'd never land a fish, but that was the last we saw of him. Once we put some bait down, it didn't take long to get bit. The first fish was a monster, but we never saw it. It made a few runs and then just seem to lock on the bottom and would not budge. I even put the rod in the holder for 5 minutes with the pressure on to no avail. Finally broke it off, any ideas on what would hold bottom like that?
There was lots of activity below us, and some bait surface action as well. We started with a bait on a 1.5oz weight, and then a freelined bait behind the boat. The deep bait definitely worked better.
We brought up a short gag, coming in at 22.5" but it was a good start. See that 1.5oz weight? I only had 4 of them, and they didn't last long.
Soon after the flatlined bait got smashed, and it finally ended up with a nice keeper amberjack in the boat. They are certainly impressive fish with immense strength for their size. No, we did not catch the AJ in the river, but our other shots weren't great.
After that, it was an AJ fest. I ran out of heavy weights to get bait down to the bottom, and broke off numerous times. Finally after a few failed efforts Mrs. Srbenda landed an AJ as well. She was incredibly sad to see him measure in at 33.5" , so he went off to swim for another day. We kept running through leader, hooks, and sinkers at a rapid rate, but fortunately, we had plenty of bait. the flatline got hit several more times, and got sharked at least once, despite the 8" wire I added. I didn't count carefully, but I think we went about 2:12 on the AJ's ( or whatever else bit down there )
All of our rigs were: 65# braid, SPRO 130# swivel, and 80# flouro leader with Gamakatsu 8/0 hooks. Both rods had a Shimano 6000/ 8000 baitrunner reel. The flatline rigs were the same, with the exception of about 6" to 8" of #8 wire on the hook.
With the wind picking up, we headed back in, and stopped at the shoals to relax for a few minutes. We didn't see any schools of bait there, but there was a school of bluefish racing around, and one of them ate a spoon. He ate it so well, it got him in the gills, and we had a bloodfest on the boat.
It was a great day on the water, and it's time to re-stock sinkers, hooks, and leader, and maybe start checking on some better quality reels to put some more pressure on these fish, as I think those Baitrunners only have about 18# max of drag pressure.
