Me and some friends went fishing last Saturday. Most of the crew was running late so me and the other guy that made it there on time started the day with shrimp under a cork at the jetties. Had a lot of bait thieves but eventually I managed to catch a little 13" dink.
Huge storm started blowing in at some point so we took off to the beach which was our original plan. As we were exiting the jetties I saw someone had gotten a nice big sheepshead, said he was using shrimp.
Made it out to the beach and the storm cleared. My friend wanted to stop at the 1st opening he saw, but I told him I was going to go ahead and look for some better surf signs. As I was driving I spotted a flock of working gulls and hopped out immediately and told my friend to get over there. My friend is very slow but he had the bait bucket, so I jumped in the surf with a top dog lure. Got a blow up but no fish, another guy nearby that had the same idea as me was using some sort of jig and landed a nice fish (couldn't make it out). My friend meanwhile has parked and is wasting time getting his gear unloaded, his freaking lounge chair setup just right… ARG!!!!
Rest of crew arrived shortly and we started all surf fishing. I was catching a lot of baby whiting (shark bait). I did hook up a nice fat whiting eventually which I kept for dinner. Eventually I busted out the yak to go do bait deployment with all the shark baits I had caught earlier. My friends meanwhile stayed behind and surf fished casually (mostly drank beer lol). Unfortunately all our big rig reels are spinning instead of conventional, I can never seem to drop a shark bait as far as we need. This is the 1st time I took a depth finder and now realize just how far out you need to get to even be in 10 ft of water - approx 700 yard from shore!! Go out 1100 yards to get 15 ft deep. Sheesh! My big spinning reel holds maybe 800 yards of 30# braid I think.
Anyway, dropped bait a few times and my buddies were hooking up a ton of… GAFTOP!!! It was gaftopopolza out there. We caught a good 7-10 of the big ones. Actually kept a few. Hey they are good eating and way easier to clean than a red if you know what you are doing. I've got a good youtube video that shows how to clean them if anyone is interested.
Dropping bait isn't necessarily the most fun thing in the world, so I figured I would take a spinning reel with me spooled with 30# braid and some 6" bomber long A lures that are shallow divers. So I trolled around with them for quite awhile. I need to check my GPS log but I probably did a good 6-10 miles trolling around that day. The surf was so freaking calm and the water was nice green and clear color. Such a nice day at the beach.
Anyway, back to my story. So trolling that lure, I managed to hook foul hook a pogy!! I kept him for some good bait. I also tossed the lure once an caught a gaftop! Wow I never figured they would hit an artificial.
Finally, one of my trolling trips I finally did it. Was trolling along and seeing such huge Spanish mackerel jumping around in the water nearby. Wow those guys can go flying. I was worrying about what if one flew out of the water and smacked into my head, knocked me unconscious and I fall off the yak and die then get eaten by a shark… Just then my lure gets SLAMED!!! Line just starts peeling off like nothing I've ever hooked before! Wtf??? I grab the rod out of the holder and start to try to turn or slow the fish. Tighten my drag a bit and manage to turn the fish. Start to reel in as fast as I can. The fish started to come for a ways then said "Nuh uh!!" and turned and started pulling my line off the reel again. Now note this was a sienna 2500 and I only had 1/2 the spool filled when I started this ill advised trip
So I see I'm getting near the metal so I tighten my drag even more. The fish slows…. AND MY LINE SNAPS!!!!!!!!!!! 
I let out a few choice words then head back to the beach lol. That was my excitement for BTB of the day. Gotta try BTB out for real some time…
On the bait drop front - my friends rod just kept catching gaffys. One time he even got a double header lol. My rod/ reel combo I could drop the bait the further since it's larger. My rod is an extra heavy 12'. We can never tell when anything is on my line because the rod barely ever flexes. This time with my depth finder and GPS combo I could better gauge how much line I had left on the reel while I was dropping bait, and how deep I was going, so I was dropping my line about 600 yards out which was just almost 10 ft deep. Soo, the rod that never flexes… nearly bend in half one time while I was out! My friends jumped up and were fighting something big! But unfortunately the line snapped
This actually happened twice too, hooked something big… So weird the line kept snapping though, odd because I had 70# mono leader. I figure maybe my braid was getting broken on the sand bars or something, it was only 30# braid line. So, that’s my report. I took home 3 gaftops and the mega whiting. My buddies caught 2 good sized trout but one of them pulled a newb mistake and carried it back to the beach by hand, then the fish wiggled his way to freedom!!! The gaftops taste better than regular catfish believe it or not. Debatable they might even taste better than redfish… I got almost 2 lbs fillets from the 3 of them, not bad.
Here's some pics from the day. I hid the faces cause they aren't mine and I didn't ask my buds if I could share these lol. You can see the double trouble Gaftop!
