Five Crazy Catches from 2024
You never know what might bite when you wet a line in the Northeast. Between red drum, tarpon, and large or unexpected shark species, these are just a few of the truly crazy catches from 2024.
New Jersey Thresher Shark from Shore
For over 10 years, AJ Rotondella, a New Jersey land-based shark-fishing guide for Apex Anglers, has been setting out big baits along the Garden State’s sand beaches. He and his clients have hooked and landed sand tigers, sandbars (brown sharks), and even bull sharks, but an adult thresher shark had eluded him. On June 3, Rotondella hooked, landed, and released a thresher with an estimated length of 12 feet (from snout to tip of the tail).
The catch defied everything Rontondella thought he knew about threshers, which tend to feed on or near the surface on schools of bunker. The massive fish devoured a 10-pound bluefish off the bottom just 45 minutes after he used his drone to drop the bait. (Check your state’s drone fishing regulations.)
“That’s why you’ve got to go and just put your time in, because you never know when something amazing might happen,” said Rotondella.
Tiger Shark from Shore on Cape Cod
When Brendan Ryder set out his eels on a Cape Cod beach one early August night, he was hoping to catch a brown shark, but ended up spending four hours catching and releasing dogfish. Finally, at 11:30 p.m., a much larger fish took one of the eels, and after a 15-minute fight and a few aggressive runs against a locked-down drag, Ryder and his friends found themselves in the wash with a tiger shark.
The trio kept the shark at water’s edge, snapped a few pictures, removed the hook, and released it in short order. “The first four trips of the year were slow,” said Ryder, who makes a 2-hour, 30-minute drive to spend long nights shark fishing on the beach. “This one catch made all those slower outings worth it.”
Tarpon in the Rhode Island Surf
In June while casting live eels from the rocky Rhode Island shoreline, Thomas Czernik hooked into a fish that fought different than a large striper. Armed with a 10-foot surf rod and a reel spooled with 30-pound-test braid, Czernik worked to tire the fish, which he estimated took 30 minutes. When he finally got it close enough to land, he was staring at a tarpon that measured 70 inches.
Red Drum in the Rips on Cape Cod
To salvage a slow day of tuna fishing, Captain Sam Crafts of Take a Chance Charters pivoted to trolling through the rips off Monomoy Island. They found a rip with some life in it, and Camden Stride, on his first saltwater fishing trip, picked up the first rod that got a bite. Crafts, fully expecting to see a striper at the end of the line, was baffled when a red drum surfaced near the boat with the white Rapala X-Rap Deep Diver in its mouth.
“It was his first time fishing salt water, so Camden had no idea why I was freaking out at that moment,” Crafts chuckled.
Stride kept his catch, as red drum are prized table fare and there are no recreational regulations for them in Massachusetts waters. The drum taped out at 34 inches and weighed 12.65 pounds.
Tarpon on Martha’s Vineyard
On Sunday, September 15, the first night of the Martha’s Vineyard Derby, Rich Mann, Tony Dagostino, and Jared Strobie were fishing fresh bait for bluefish and ended up catching a 72-inch tarpon instead. That made it the third surf-caught tarpon in New England since August 2023.
Source: https://onthewater.com/five-crazy-catches-from-2024
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