Shark Bait My Take

[kingfish]

My first post ever so I'll try and make it a good one. Been reading the forum, and I saw several posts about shark bait. All this is my personal opinion and no, I don't think I'm an expert. Shark fishing off the beach/bridge is near and dear to my heart, so I figured I'd give my 2 cents. The absolute best bait ever, my opinion, for catching big sharks off the beach is the "bat ray" or Atlantic Cownose Ray. The biggest Dusky, Bull, and Lemon I've ever caught came from batrays. We would pull seine nets off the Jax beaches, or snatch them from the pier or Skyway Bridge. They swim in big pods right off the breakers and swim off the Skyway this time of year. I would cut the wings off and put the front hook through the nose and the back hook so it was sticking up near the tail. Back in the day, we would put 10-15 reels off the beach and the ones with the batrays always got hammered the most. My other favorites in order, shark pups/small sharks (biggest Tiger), regular stingrays (biggest Hammerhead), bonito heads, bonito tails, midsections from big jacks (AJ's or crevalle), barracudas, small whole jack crevalle, and kingfish heads round out the list. The best run I ever got off the Skyway Bridge, and I mean a smoker, was on a fresh blue runner and spanish mackeral combo. I missed !!. Any way hope this helps. Kingfish