Thread: Jekyll Island surf fishing 14apr11 day of the rays.

I packed up Thursday morning and struck out to Jekyll Island to surf fish for the first time this calendar year. I arrived at approximately noon and got set up at the bottom of low tide. The first cast on my bait rod yielded a nice fat keeper whiting caught on squid. It volunteered itself to be bait and I got busy carving it up in chunks. I immediately caught a small sharpnose on the fresh whiting and wound up with four of them being caught within a short time. They all looked like this:


I also began to catch a few smaller rays on shrimp and squid. I caught two bigger rays on pieces of whiting and was able to break in my new Saltist 30.

This other one apparently had been caught and someone and they docked it's tail just like a bulldog.


I also caught my first clear nose skate. Man they have wicked looking eyes.


I saved the whiting head for the end of the tide and finally cast it out on my heavy heaver. It sat soaking for about 30 minutes and got picked up. On the initial run it peeled out about 75 yards of line, then began to swim up and down parallell to the beach. I figured it had to be a ray because it would stop and hunker down in the sand. When I would twang the line with my fingers it would swim a short distance and suck down on the bottom again. A guy I didn't know came up to me while I was fighting the ray and volunteered to leader it for me. He waded out in chest deep water and grabbed the leader and started to drag the ray back up on the sand. It took about 40 minutes from the initial run to get her landed. After about 15 minutes it wasn't much fun anymore. It was the biggest ray I have ever landed while surf fishing.


By this time I was ready to call it a day and gathered up all my equipment.

Looks like you had a blast! That's one bigass ray.

Never really been saltwater fishing before...other than deep sea fishing once, but looks like a blast. I'll have to try it one day.

Nice, Very Nice!!!!!!!