LJ 10/15 - Scouting sharks with Coach

Talked Werfless into coming out with me Thursday night. He suggested a spot in LJ he wanted to check out for signs of sharky activity.

We both arrived around 6, as sunset was underway. A lot of people out taking sunset photos, surfer bros out searching for the big wave, and some guy doing shirtless handstands with a sunset-ocean backdrop while his buddy took photos for a really next-level Tinder profile photo, I suppose.

There was some extremely heavy concentration of weeds in the water just to our south, in one big pocket, but the water was reasonably clear to start with otherwise.

As the sunset happened, a few spearos went out into the water, and some lobster divers too. Lots of activity. We set up shop on the rocky point where a professional photographer had been taking a family's photos when they lost light.

I had brought out some market shrimp and Werfless, ever prepared, was clearing out his freezer of chum. The tide had been low at 3pm and was coming in pretty strong, so we felt like from a tide standpoint we were looking good.

Coach hooked up with a small walleye surf perch and a garibaldi (released) pretty early in the evening. At his suggestion I swapped out my shrimp chunk for a fish head from his supply, and threw out a reasonable distance. He remarked that I was closer to catching a tank calico bass, than I'd ever been in my life - that or I'd experience my first sharking.

As usual, he is quite prophetic, and my pole began to feel weight, growing for a second or two, and then absolutely no weight whatsoever. Reeled in, knowing I had lost at least something, but was surprised to see that my entire rig was gone. cort 0, sharks 1 - for those of you keeping track at home. My first sharking. Kind of cool, at least!

Around this time, the tide had come in enough that some of the big kelp stringers that were previously beached were now floating around in the surf. I rigged back up and tossed on another chunk of fish, and later had a nice hit, and the fish felt quite heavy, but seemed to make a beeline right into one of these kelp clumps - and despite my efforts to dance off the rock we were standing on into a position to better manage the situation, the fish managed to get some slack line and shook himself off. Bummer.

Waves were really pounding the rock we were on, and Coach decided to call it an evening. I stuck around for another 25-30 minutes and moved to the next rock to the south, which was higher and dryer. This is when I experienced my second sharking. This time, I knew exactly what had happened the second it occurred.

Was pushing 9pm by this point so I decided to pack in rather than retie too. (though this time I just lost a hook, rather than weight and hook)

All in all was fun, and my first experience dealing with decent sized sharks directly. The couple little leopard sharks I've caught in the surf were sharks in name only.