# Beach at Alligator point, FL, Panhandle



## FishTheBeach (May 17, 2007)

Hi all,

I arrived on the beach on Saturday and will stay for 2 weeks. Right in front of the house, there is a sandbar 40 feet away and then the second one might be more than 200 yard away ( can't really see it) but in between it is making it a good channel for gamefish.

First day, I caught 1 16"blue, several gaftops, 1 large stingray (more than 3 feet from noise to tail) and 2 baby blacktip ( I think I may call them Blacktip minnows) and a small cobia.

By the way, Ballyho are great to catch on a sabiki rig with shrimp fishbites on the hooks from the beach... they are difficult to hook but are a great bait for small blacktips or blues.

I put the Blue's head on my now shark pole, a OM 12' heavy with a Abu 7000c3i filled up with #20. After maybe 1 hour soaking, First run and first hook of a large shark. After 10 minutes my shock leader knot failed  

After this time I really took care of the knots and I changed the #20 mono with PP 65# which slide less on the heavy #60 leader. Hook are still 8/10 circle

On Tuesday, I tried something crazy. I cut a gaftop tail (those are quite bloody  ). After maybe 10 minutes bang...

30 minute later, I got him on the beach. about 4 feet long blacktip. Got the hook out with my fingers ( don't do that unless the shark is really tired) he was the biggest fish that I ever caught... Now I am hooked to sharking.


Yesterday , did the same , put a large bloody gaftop tail and hooked a 5 footer that took me 40 minutes running up and down the beach. If he wanted , he could have spooled me as I only have 290 yards of main line. But he decided to stay close to the sandbar.










More Fishing reports to come.

Now a report on equipment.

The OM 12' is sweet and has the backbone to fight those big ones. I do about 50 to 70 yards with 6oz + 8 oz chunk using pendulum ( the 6oz lead is not enough for any other style for this rod). And I am not an expert.

The abu 7000 c3i is sweet to cast and the drag are much better than the BG7000HS I bought last year. I tuned them both before the trip and I will say that the 7000c3i is much more friendly with braid than the Big Game one.


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## TreednNC (Jul 1, 2005)

Nice report. Great first post. Welcome to the forum.


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## RuddeDogg (Mar 20, 2004)

*Great read*

welcome to the family.


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## FishTheBeach (May 17, 2007)

*Hooked*

Thanks. I am completly hooked to surf fishing. we have a 12foot aluminum boat that could bring me farther away but I prefer the surf in order to give the fish a chance to escape.

I am closer to the eastern coast than Florida but this is where we decided to go on vacation ( my 2 small kids like the wave free pool that the gulf offers).

This forum is a encyclopedia of information for surf fishing. I probably spend more time on this forum in the past year than any other website.

I was logged before as LazySurfFisherman but I changed email address and forgot to update my account.... Still I still have less then 10 post alltogether.

Now that I've learned so much... It's my time to help others....


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## VICIII (Apr 8, 2005)

Welcome to the madness... Nice to see your hooked... Nice pics and post!!!


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