Hey, Guess who?

Posted: April 13th, 2010 by Bill Dance

Hey, Guess who?  Yep, it’s me, and do I have a wild thing to tell you.  Just got back from Florida about a week ago where we did some store promotions for Bass Pro Shops, shot some freshwater shows as well as a few saltwater shows.  Without a doubt, it was the coldest, wettest, windiest trip we have ever made to the sunshine state.  Wore a jacket nearly every day, from Miami to Orlando to Tampa to Destin.  Did we get skunked?  Does five pounds of flour make a big biscuit?  Despite the conditions, we came home Victorious!

Naturally didn’t get everything we wanted, but with water temps ranging from 58 – 66 degrees in both fresh and salt, we got some pretty good stuff.

One neat show was at Key Biscayne where we bombed out on bonefish and permit, (water 62 degrees).  The next morning we decided to do a segment drift fishing trying to catch 40 – 60 pound blacktip, bull and lemon sharks on a shallow 3 foot flat a couple of miles off shore, using my every day bass tackle  – a 7′ medium-heavy Quantum Energy PT rod, a Quantum Energy 150 PT bait casting reel spooled with 30# braided line, with a 14″ section of 50 lbs fluorocarbon leader and tied to that with an albright knot, we added another 14 inch section of #5 SS wire leader, a 7/0 4x Strong Gamakatsu circle hook and the bait was a Jack Crevalle filet about the size of your hand.

Now the day before, we saw lots of small shark.  Capt. Andy Thompson, my fishing buddy said they were there to spawn.  But, the next morning it was a different story!  You could write a song titled, “Where Have All the Young Shark Gone?”.  Nearly everything we saw had definitely grown up over night!  Well to make a long story short, I hooked up with nine and landed only four.  The smallest and toughest that took over an hour to land was a 70 pound blacktip.  Now, listen to this!  The other three were lemons, two weighed around 150 pounds each and the other was over 170 pounds!  Four sharks weighing over 500 pounds on my crankbait rod.  True story!  That’s saying a lot for your bass rod, reel and line wouldn’t you say?

You can see all the action on future Bill Dance Saltwater shows on the Outdoor Channel.  Check it out!