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I posted this a while back on PFIC - still one of the craziest days fishing I've ever had. -


Well, I got the grunion run date wrong so we didnt see one. Got to Surf Rider Beach in Malibu Friday night around 10:00 to catch the best part of the in coming tide. We stayed until around 3:00am Saturday and didnt do very well, I got a 2 bat ray and a small shovel nose (of course), My buddy Ken Got skunked. At 3:00am we packed it up and headed to the rocks at the Chart House. I fell asleep in the car, while, Ken fished straight through to sunrise, getting skunked again.



Sunrise woke me Saturday AM; I thought I would try the rocks at the Chart House (now that I could see them). An hour later, after losing a whole bunch of terminal tackle and needing a strong coffee, we headed back up to the pier in Malibu. Got to the pier before they opened the gates at the end, got rigged up and the gates opened. We had our choice of the end for about 8 minutes, in that 8 minutes I rigged my Seeker 270 rod/Shimano 4500 bait runner with a sliding rig baited with a trimmed, baitfish sized mackerel tail. And flung it out.



I was rigging a sabiki rig up when the line out alarm on the Baitrunner started screaming, Putting it in gear and setting the hook, I realized, I had a big fish (hoping for a 20lb halibut), had to be a bat ray, this guy headed out and just could not/ would not be stopped, it finally spat the size 4 hook, after almost spooling me. I quickly rigged my new 10 ugly stick/ Penn squidder rig a cast to the same area as before. Ten minutes later the clicker started up, set it in gear and set the hook (a 5/0 this time). Ended up bringing a 40 bat to the net.



It was hit and miss until around noon when the clicker on the squidder went off again, another good-sized bat ray. About 5 minutes into this guy, One of Kens rods went off and sure enough we had two going on the end of the pier. As Ken was starting to work his ray, his other rod started screaming.. You guessed it, now we have 3 going between the two of us. Ken handed off his spinning rig (with a smaller ray on it) to a guy trying to help clear lines on the end of the pier. In the ensuing chaos, the ray Ken had handed off got tangled up in everyone elses lines and broke Kens line. The guys fishing the tangled lines started working on straightening them out, when one of them found Kens broken off line, sure enough the ray was still on it!! .



Amazing the guy-started hand lining the ray in, I started applying more pressure on mine so I could help out..And pop, there goes my. Kens fish is still going long and deep, so I started giving the hand line guy a hand and get the net ready. Conclusion Bat Rays dont like nets. Almost made it but 25lb mono is really hard on the hands, #2 ray gone. Ken, at this point, has it under control and we get his ray to the net.



Things got slow as afternoon approached, until Kens 6lb bait rig started going silly. End result. Ken brought a 21/2-foot shovelnose to the net!!



What a great day and a half! not quite epic, but, with out a doubt, priceless!!