7/12/14 am

I got in a few hours of kayak fishing this morning. Decided to go with the old faithful combo of live shrimp & a popping cork. I only picked up a dozen, assuming I could switch over to a jig if I ran out...mistake. I was anchored up on a front beach reef before the sun came up. After half an hour of no hits on shrimp or anything else I had in the box, I decided to make one move. It's a pain to drag the kayak across the sand and load/unload all my gear, so I was only making one move. It turned out to be a good one. When I got to my next spot, I tossed a shrimp out and the cork went under before I could get my paddle away. Nice 3.25 lb trout. After that, I landed a few school trout and a bunch of small black tips. After about 3 sharks in a row my reel started screaming. I saw a bit of black on a fin and assumed it was a bigger shark. I didn't worry much and casually reeled it in...then she gave me a flash of silver and a yellow mouth next to the kayak. It never gave a head shake or even fought hard until seeing the yak. After that, she absolutely went nuts. I scrambled to grab the net and she fell out 3 times (small net). If the hook hadn't been swallowed, I think I would have lost a great fish. Finally got the boga on her - ~5.5lbs. I picked up a couple more decent fish of ~1.5 & 2 lbs. On one of my last shrimp I had a similar feeling fish with the same story, but this one dove under the kayak and got free. Losing a big one hurts, but I couldn't complain at that point. After I ran out of shrimp I couldn't buy a bite on anything in the box.
There was baiting busting everywhere all morning. I have rarely seen that much.

The 2 biggest.