Well for this weeks trip we decided to head to Sprigger bank again, we decided to camp at Fiesta Key KOA campground, personally I much prefer camping in the Adirondack Mountains to camping in the Florida Keys, at least in terms of just camping. Campgrounds in the Keys tend to be dusty, and more like a parking lot then the campgrounds I am used to. But you are on a tropical island, in the Florida Keys, next to the best fishing and diving in the country, so it’s a trade off.

Our First day there we tried to snorkel on the ocean side of Long Key but the visibility was terrible and for the most part it was wash. That night I collected fish carcasses from some guys who had been fishing on the reef, I was pretty stoked I got a whole bucket full. So the next day I cast netted some pilchards around the boat slips in the KOA, then hair hooked some pinfish and we headed out to sprigger bank. This time I headed north past the bank, and luckily the massive amount of lobster traps weren’t there. We anchored in about 8 feet of water, and filled one chum bag with menhaden chum and the other with fish carcasses and then waited.

The first things that showed up where some ladyfish and some catfish, lady fish are kind of fun to catch when they are on really light tackle. Catfish although mostly universally disliked, make great shark bait. Just cut the catfish in half behind its bony head and use the back half as bait, sharks love it.

Anyways it was pretty slow until the tide changed then the sharks started to show, in total we caught 8 sharks, 1 Black Tip, 6 bulls and one big nurse. Which to me is great shark day; we pretty much avoided the lemons, which in my opinion are only a hair above nurse sharks in their sporty ness. For the most part lemons don’t jump and don’t run that much it’s sort of like reeling in a log. Small lemons are ok on light tackle but bulls, black tips and spinners are by far the best. At least 4 of the sharks jumped several flipping end over end, and some spun like a top out of the water.

I switched the 30# ande line this trip with 50# gorilla braid, which performed extremely well, I also tried some 65# spider wire stealth, which performed like crap, losing the first 2 fish that hit the baits.