[psychodiagnostik]

So the family & I did a long weekend at the Moran, I tried my surf shark fishing project Friday/Saturday/Sunday night, with a little regular surf fishing in the mornings.

Plenty of panfish in the surf at Ft. Fisher in the mornings & in the river near the ferry station, small whiting, croaker, blowtoads and sea robin. I caught one under-limit 10 inch black drum on the retrieve literally in the suds, I'm always surprised just how close to the dry sand you can catch black drum. Not much being caught on Kure pier except ribbonfish on plugs and one 5lb flounder caught Sunday.

On my shark rod, fishing casted fishhead/filet combo I had two runs Friday night, two runs Saturday night, with zero pick-ups Sunday night. Didn't land anything! Zero break-offs, they just kept unhooking or dropping the hook after one run. I tried both J and circle hooks in the 12/0 range, I think I need to sharpen the hooks instead of using them out of the box. One shark in the 4 foot range was on for while, jumped & unhooked itself that way. I was fishing to the far left of Kure pier sundown until 11pm or so, mostly rising tide.

Also, does anyone know the latest in the year you can get shark action in the surf with casted bait on Pleasure Island? I'm trying to get at least a couple more short trips in before winter, but now until early October is gonna be tough to get off work.
Thanks!

 

[kbueno1]

Thanks for the report.

KBueno

 

[pods]

One tip for increasing hookups with circle hooks is to increase your drag while the bait soaks. Have it as tight as you can to keep it in the rod holder. This works really well with casted baits, as they are small.
We have greatly increased our hookup ratios this way. Small sharks will pick up the bait and have it pull out and larger sharks will pin themselves right in the corner of the jaw.
Circle hook size seems good for casted baits, depending on brand you could even go smaller. Trial and error. What is your weight setup?
As long as the water is warm you will have blacktips and spinners around. We've found plenty around late Oct on Topsail, but the water was still pretty warm.
Sounds like you had action at least, and that is much better than my situation now, namely thinking about fishing while at work.

 

[psychodiagnostik]

One tip for increasing hookups with circle hooks is to increase your drag while the bait soaks. Have it as tight as you can to keep it in the rod holder. This works really well with casted baits, as they are small.
We have greatly increased our hookup ratios this way. Small sharks will pick up the bait and have it pull out and larger sharks will pin themselves right in the corner of the jaw.
Circle hook size seems good for casted baits, depending on brand you could even go smaller. Trial and error. What is your weight setup?
As long as the water is warm you will have blacktips and spinners around. We've found plenty around late Oct on Topsail, but the water was still pretty warm.
Sounds like you had action at least, and that is much better than my situation now, namely thinking about fishing while at work.

Thanks, I've thought about the drag & played with it a bit, but I'm hesitant to go much tighter than 5# or so, sharks hit so hard! What I'm finding is there's no "bump" or preview to the reel screaming & line peeling. I'm worried that much tighter could result in a break off on the pickup from the drag not slipping fast enough.

I'm using a four-five oz. sputnik for weight, that with 5lb of drag lets me crank a bit of a bow in my heavy action 15ft surf rod.

 

[pods]

That sounds about right. 5# is good enough to hook them. If they take right off screaming it usually means a smaller shark, but casted baits are smaller and a bigger shark will pick that up and go as well so it is tough to tell sometimes.
I use sputniks as well, they seem to hook them better as it sets the hook well then lets them run when it breaks loose.
Could just have been a bit of bad luck? Sounds like a good setup.
Are your circles offset? I have had better hookups with offset but they pose a greater danger of deep hooking. I haven't had that problem as I keep the drag set as tight as I can, but there is that danger.
Just make sure you don't crowd the hook with bait. This will really affect the circles in doing their jobs. I usually use a half a bluefish for bait and only put it through the top of the head, and as far back on the tail for the other half as I can to keep it on when casting.