Thread: Quick Lunch Trip - Shellcracker

Haven't posted in a while, but I thought I'd share a pretty eventful 1 hour of fishing during my lunch break today. I have been waiting on a certain bedding area to start getting right and today I finally found some big shellcracker in this location. I didn't have time for a bait store trip, so I used a black squirrel hair jig tipped with a Berkley Honeyworm. There were several big ones I could see fanning the bed that wouldn't bite, but I still managed 5 or 6 good ones. Fish below was a beautiful specimen and measured 10". I'm hoping to get a chance to go back tomorrow afternoon with some redworms and see if I can't do any better.

Now for the eventful part - I just put the 3rd fish on the stringer and threw it back in the water. I was re-tying and noticed the stringer going out further away, and figured it was just the fish I put on swimming out. I grabbed it to pull it back in and a 15-20 lb flathead had grabbed one of them and took off with it. He didn't let go until I pulled him into about 6" of water, lol. That was a first for me! I'll try to grab a pic of the unlucky fish that got scarred up a little when I clean these and post it later on. He should still eat fine but I'm sure it was an unpleasant ordeal!