Here are some Photos of a Giant I caught in Huntington Harbo
Hello Socal Fisherman...I'm new to this page and have quite a few recent pics and stories to share. I've lived here in SoCal about 2 years now and have found a new love in saltwater fishing. Not new to fishing I grew up in Chicagoland, miles from any saltwater body, but a very active freshwater fisherman I have landed some decent size largemouths, muskies and northern pikes.......But never had I imagined living close enough to the ocean to fish at least once a week and landing some of the fish that I have caught.
Me and my buddie took his boat out in the beginning of December to Huntington Harbor for a Night Launch and some harbor fishing. We ancored ourselves on the edge of a deep channel comming into the harbor and we began fishing. I was using my new Sealine 40h with my Penn international 6'6" rod with 40lb yozuri line, a 2 oz egg sinker and a #7 circle hook with whole squids. With rays and sharks as my intentional catch I seemed to put myself In a great position to land this HUGE batray after about a 20 minute fight. It hit hard and began spooling my 250+ yards of line, I began to notice my line getting pretty short in supply so I tightened the drag to the point where it was barely giving and horsed this monster from his mad b-line dash. It almost pulled me in the water but I managed to start pumping him back in my direction, using one hand high on the rod, the rod end buried in my gut and my other hand on the crank. After about 20 mins this ray finally was withing about 15 feet of our boat and began circling the boat in a shark fashion. My buddie came over with the light after winding our other 4 poles to see if we could catch a glimpse of this monster that now had circled the boat 3 or more times and just as we were both leaning over to see what it was, the huge bat ray charged at us and began to jump out of the water strait at us less than 4 feet away. It scared the living ***** out of us, at that point we didn't know what it was, and we almost both went over the other side of the boat. Finally we got it to the side of the boat for a good look. WOW, this ray was over 5-6 feet from wingtip to wingtip and its head was about the size of 1.5 very large rotweilers heads. I tried to lean over the boat to pick it up for a good picture and couldn't even get it more than a quarter out of the water. I would estimate the weight to be over 150lbs in comparison to picking up a decent sized adult male. Here are some of the pictures and videos that we did get before we released this beautiful animal. I was sore for about 3 days after fighting this thing. It felt like I went thru hell with a new personal trainier.[attachment=3:91e2a]ray1.jpg[/attachment:91e2a][attachment=2:91e2a]ray2.jpg[/attachment:91e2a]
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Originally Posted by Brad100
