30th

Citations:

COBIA:  56'' catch and release Cobia caught by Mary Norton, Manager of the Virginia Beach Fishing Center

BLUE LINE TILEFISH:  16lb Blue Line Tilefish caught by Steven Dunn of Suffolk, VA

HAMMERHEAD:  76'' Hammerhead Shark caught by Getty Rothenberg of Richmond, VA

HAMMERHEAD:  74'' Hammerhead Shark caught by Ben Sheperd of Chesapeake, VA

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Today ended up turning out to be pretty nice down here in Virginia Beach.  We missed all the storms and the bad weather that we thought we might get and instead had a nice HOT sunny day.  We had a few boats go fishing today both inshore and offshore.

Offshore we are starting to see tons and tons of Blue and White Marlin.  The numbers of catch and releases is increasing, but we are also starting to get more reports of larger fish too!  We are excited for August and all of the tournaments it brings.  We have the Virginia Beach Billfish Tournament out of our marina here August 20th-22nd and expect it to be another great year with tons of large fish being caught.  We also have several of our captains fishing other tournaments throughout the month.  Unfortunately offshore we have not begun to catch large numbers of Tuna again yet, but hopefully as the tournaments get closer we will begin to see more of these too! 

Inshore we are still seeing a lot of Bluefish along the coastline.  The blues haven't been too large but there have been a lot of them.  We are also starting to see a lot of Cobia too!  There was one catch and release citation for Cobia caught by the marina manager today!  In addition to the citation we spotted a lot of other Cobias in the water around us while fishing for shark. 

Today the girls who work at the marina booking charters got to try their hand at shark fishing!  None of us girls had ever gotten to go fishing for sharks so it was a great experience for us all.  After catching some Bluefish, we headed out for the sharks.  The sharks have been running really strong and at the end of the trip we had caught close to 35 sharks between the 5 of us!  The majority of the sharks we caught were Black Tip Sharks, but we also some Sharp Nose Sharks and a Sand Shark.  All of the sharks were catch and releases with one of the Sharp Nose Sharks reaching to about 56 inches.  After having a great time and catching tons of sharks, I would personally have to say shark fishing is a lot of fun and something I would highly recommend to anyone to try at least once!  

SHARK FISHING PHOTOS!!!!!