One of the silver linings of the pandemic was hybrid work. When you live close to the beach like us that also means we can get up early in the morning on days I’m home and wet some lines before the workday. Monday was one of those mornings and the plan was to get to the beach for sunrise. What a way to start the week!

It’s absolutely beautiful to be at the beach for sunrise. The calm yet unlimited power of the ocean early in the morning mixed with sheer beauty in the sky. You hardly notice how challenged your legs are walking through the sand carrying a bucket, chair, backpack, camera bag, two big fishing poles, and two rod holders. Come to think of it, maybe I need a beach caddy. You can feel the elements of nature recharging your inner battery and calming your nerves. An Osprey flies overhead with a fish in its talons showing you what successful fisherfolk look like and you smile hoping to be so lucky.

With Colleen, who I jokingly refer to as our “War Photographer” along for the ride we setup two lines in the low morning light with surf clam bait and watched the sunrise.

While I was actually after dinner in the form of striped bass or blue fish, action is action and Monday’s action was skates! Very similar to stingrays but with a few key differences, skates are swimming along the bottom eating shrimp, clams, etc. They differ from stingrays in that you don’t want to pet these guys like you can pet stingrays at the aquarium. These prehistoric looking beasts of the deep are covered with sharp spines which having learned first hand, will cause you to bleed a fair amount if you aren’t careful. They don’t have venomous tails like stingrays but some of them do have electrical glands in their tails which are said to be more for what is probably communication than defense given the low output. More on skates here.

Skates will tug a bit on the line but not a lot and sometimes you’re not even sure if you’re just playing with your sinker in the surf or not. Then you get them just close enough to shore and they show you how strong they are at swimming, which is pretty darn strong. They’re a lot different than the constant heavy tugs of blue fish or striped bass which have on occasion even caused my rod holder to tip over out of the sand.

With my first skate chomping on clams I decided to change it up and used a chunk of bunker fish which is the prominent bait fish in this area. Pretty soon I had another skate on. In hindsight I could have used a floater to keep the bait off the bottom since this was clearly a “Skate Party” where I was fishing. Next time!

Then finally, I hooked a monster. Yet another skate, but way too large. In the beginning when I set the hook it briefly surfaced and I saw a tail splash that was probably attached to a skate at least 3 feet across. It just started leaving. Peeling off line, it was hardly budging at all. They’re such powerful swimmers. I asked Colleen to bring in the other line because this was going to be a while and there was of course a tiny dogfish (baby shark) on that line which she brought in. We switched back and forth so I could de-hook the dog fish and get back to the big one.

In the below video you can see my only real option with a fish this size was to back up and then reel as I walked back into the surf. This happened to me once before at the same beach years ago (Same monster? Hah!) and the same thing happened. It was so big the line eventually broke. See you in a few years my sea monster friend. 😉