I thought I would share my Long Beach Island vacation fishing experience-- it was frugal, fun, and tasty.  I was fishing with a familiar fishing partner, my wife's cousin's husband.  We have landed all sorts of fish on this beach over the years . . .

Using my minnow bait trap and some stale bread, we secure some nice bait fish from the bayside of the island.  We then ventured to the beach side of the island to surfcast (literally casting into the waves).  We fished a depression we had seen from the beach at low tide.

Between 6:30-7:00 PM I hooked up and started a 15-20 minute battle to land my catch-- I knew I had a stingray on the line.  I ran down to the water and back up the beach about 30 feet, I ran side to side 20-30 feet, I adjusted the drag dial back and forth, and I tugged.  Finally, my catch made its appearance through the foam of the surf-- a large two foot wingspan, Southern Stingray.  We estimate its weight at about 25-30 pounds.

My arms burned and my breath was short due to the adrenaline, but the empty beach now had a crowd to see this sea monster.  This was a triumph for me because I had lost a few of these in the past-- they are good at breaking your line, hence the importance of good line and drag (mechanism on the reel that provides "give" in the event of the fish pull back-- it needs to be adjusted as you reel in big ones that weigh more than the test weight [the maximum weight your line supports] of your line) management.  The aftermath included discovering that the fight had broken the tip and the second eyelet off my rod (It was an old one I planned on replacing during the after season sales).

WORDS OF WARNING: Stingrays are very dangerous to handle-- they have long whipping tails (mine had a 3-4 feet long tail that moved about 300 degrees) with barbs and poison.  It was a stingray that killed celebrity Steve Irwin in a freak accident.  In fact, the day after my catch in a bait and tackle shop I perused a booklet on surfcasting which recommended cutting the line and not landing a ray.  Bottomline: Respect the animal.  You can harvest one if you are extremely careful-- if you are a casual fisherman this probably isn't for you.

With my fishing partner's help (basically keeping an extra set of eyes on the wildly whipping tail), I pinned the tail down with two surfcasting rod holding spikes (2 1/2 inch PVC pipes with points) and I cut the tail off-- threat neutralized.

You can eat stingray and skatefish, it is similar to scallops.  I took my catch home and filleted it (the recipe and links to other recipes will be posted on DaddyCooksQuick.com tonight or tomorrow).  When I receive the photos from my wife's uncle I will add them to this post.  In the mean time, while there is no video of me pulling this thing in, here is a Malaysian video I found of a guy pulling in a small blue spotted ray-- it gives you a good feel for what is involved in bringing even a small one in-- here's the link Malaysian Surfcaster Landing a Stingray.

The following day, we fished the inlet at Barnegat Lighthouse and I caught a 13 inch herring and my fishing partner nabbed a nice large (2-3 pounder) Trigger fish (very tasty, much like Scup or Porgy, but with Kevlar for skin-- worse than a shark and I have an extremely sharp fillet knife).  We also caught a small Sea Robin (also edible if big enough-- we used it for bait) and several too short to keep Blackfish.  Unfortunately, we didn't get any Bluefish, Skatefish, or Fluke (all good eating).

Good fishing.

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