Report submitted by 'James'

PINS Surf Report Padre Island National Seashore, TX May 8-10th, 2008 Tweet

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Lindsey and I hit the beach early (2-3am) Thursday, and woke up to slightly rough murky to dirty water. We fished a little that morning on our way down the beach with only one keeper Blk drum to show for. Ran the drum out and got a hit and a miss. Weed started rolling in and we picked up. As I was reeling in the drum, it got picked up in the 1st gut, but of course… no hookup. We camped by the PM jetty Thursday night with a 18" dink red that I reeled in on Lindsey's rod while she was washing her hair in the ocean. The next morning I woke up to flat seas but still murky water. The only thing that was biting was hardheads so we rolled north to try our luck up the beach. We stopped a couple of spots and landed one bull whiting and two platter sized cownose rays. Then we stopped at a spot with a slight green tint and put a bait rod and a casted bait out for a lunch break. I got a run and a miss on the casted bait (whiting) so it was game on. I hooked up with this 5'2" female Bt.

Next was a 41" Jackfish on whiting.

Then Lindsey got her first Jack 42".

This is where I believe karma comes into play. I asked Lindsey about her Jack and she said we should release it since we had two (one was from my freezer). Well we cpr'd the Jack much to my saying it was dead it swam off. Lol. It was slow after that. I ran out a half jack on the 12/0 and a section on the 6/0 with no luck. My 3/0 with a casted bait took off and we soon had a 4'10" female Bt cpr'd.

My buddy Derek showed up later that night. We woke up to the same conditions as before. Slower than before we keep fishing. Derek lands and releases a 4'5" and 4'7" Bts. He rolled out for home about 4pm. After that we got a few runs with misses here and there. Lindsey landed this nice founder (released).

Got to say she fished the WHOLE time. So it was good to she her catch some decent fish. We decided it was best to fish cast baits really hard that night. It was about 6 pm when we decided to change out to fresh bait and I had just casted out the 3/0. I was rigging up a bait for the next rod when the 3/0 took off. I got the rod down...tightened the drag...and figured it was just another 4 or 5 ft Bt, so I figured I was going to give the it over to Lindsey. I could tell right away that with it’s slow and steady pulls that this was not another Bt. The fish took me down to about half a spool but I wasn’t worried because my 3/0 is loaded with a backing of 65#pp underneath. Slowly we continued a back and forth...north to south fight.......that would come to the first sandbar and then take off for another run. We saw one glimpse of the dorsal over the first bar, which we thought to have been maybe a fat bull.

I got it to the break on the first bar and decided to give it a shot to tail rope it in. I handed the rod off to Lindsey and told her to keep steady pressure and let it run if it wanted to run. I went through the belly deep wade gut, got on to the first bar, where I got my first glimpse of the two dorsals. This is where I went crazy because I knew it was a Lemon. I was so excited; I was screaming "Lemon" and "Take it Easy" even thought she could not hear me or for that matter even understand me. I quickly calmed myself down for the job at hand, which was tail roping this beast. After a few frustrating attempts, I finally got a rope around it's tail and got her on the beach. Lindsey didn't know what to think as I was running around the beach screaming..."LEMON...LEMON...LEMON!!!!" We photographed, measured, and released her back into the murky seas. She taped off at 7' 7", which is my biggest shark to date.

This is only Lindsey's second trip down to the beach and I have caught a 7 footer both times. Maybe she is good karma. So after we let just what happened soak in, it was back to work. A bit later we had another run. After a short fight, Lindsey got a good sized ray to the beach. We finally got settled back down and started cooking some burgers when the overworked 3/0 went off again. After a short fight, Lindsey got her first shark to the beach. It was a 4' 4" female Bt.

It was then quiet for rest of the night except for the one missed run at 2:30 a.m. We figured we would fish Sunday until the front hit. It started off slow, so I decided to paddle out a cownose on my 9/0. While I was battling decent swells over the second sandbar the "Lucky" 3/0 took off. Lindsey was left to battle this fish on her own. After a hard seesaw battle, I went out and clipped the rope to the leader and drug in a huge ray. This ray kicked my butt, and measured 56" from wing to wing. It was released.

After that, the front hit, and we picked up and rolled home. This has been one of my better trips, and it seems that I have some good Karma this year. See ya'll in the sand.

- James aka JimBeam

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