Incredible fishing story. (from today)
 

Was fishing at the mouth of Ponce Inlet today (Florida) in my little 14" Carolina Skiff. Me and 2 other guys started off fishing the backwater for red drum and not having any luck we decided to head out to the Inlet. I had light tackle (10# test line) and was using live shrimp for bait. It was slow out there too (bad day) but suddenly something took the bait and started pealing off line like crazy and the drag was singing. When you have light tackle like this you just have to let it go and wear the fish out so we started up the boat and headed in the direction of my line chasing it down while I reeled in the excess line. Finally we got close to it and were nearly over it. It was a HUGE dam Manta Ray. I'd guess it was a good 15-20 feet wide from wing tip to wing tip. It was BIG. Probably didn't even know it was hooked. It was hooked in the mouth and was right in front of the boat and its wing tips were coming out of the water about 10' away on each side of the boat. An easy 20' span I'd say. Biggest thing I've ever seen. So I reeled in as much line as I could and just broke the line. I was so pissed I didn't bring my video camera! :mad:


Anyways for those of you that don't know what a Manta Ray is here is a pick of one for a reference: http://www.borneodiverskl.com/images.../manta-ray.jpg

they can get pretty big.

no way you can land that shit, they usually take off and drop to the bottom forming a suction of sorts and after that you can pretty much forget about it.

shame to have to leave a hook in that beasts mouth tho

it was a small hook and it will disintegrate away in a couple weeks max, fishing hooks are made to do that