Hooked a Shark!

Since Hal and Kevin's fishing excursion was a bit of a bust the other day, we decided to rent a small boat (they call them dinghy's) and some gear and head out fishing on our own for a 1/2 day. Got in our little dinghy and headed out to a cove over on Dent Island (one island over). Hal was checking out google earth the night before to see where the reef was, and we scoped out what we thought would be a good spot. The first 1/2 hour was a bust - a few nibbles, but nothing much. Kevin and Hal each had a reel, and I was trying just a hand line. So we continued to move around a bit, until we found just the very edge of the reef (used the anchor to gauge the depth to find the drop off) and dropped our lines- I swapped Hal for a reel. Bam - I had the first one - some sort of rock cod crazy looking fish that was too small to keep, so back he went. Then it was Hal's turn. He caught a little yellow stripey thing that the guy back at the dinghy hire place said was a good bait fish, so we kept him and chopped him up. Stuck a big piece on my hook and one cast later, I had another one of the same fish I caught before (maybe the same guy, or his twin brother). So back he went. Then Kevin caught one (not sure what it was), but once again was undersized, so back he went too. Hal caught another rock cod. Then I pulled out what turned out to be our dinner that night - a nice sized Sweet Lip. A few more casts, a couple hooks lost on the reef and then.....thought I was caught on the reef cause I had a big tug and couldn't reel. I continued to crank that reel hard and realized I was not on the reef, but had a biggy! Kept on cranking, thinking my arm was gonna fall off and finally, up to the surface on my hook came a 3 ft reef shark!! He gave one good thrash and he was gone - hook and bait still on my rod. Whoo - was that exciting! Fished for a little longer, unfortunately not catching anything else that we could add to the bucket. Time was up, so headed back to the marina. Turned in our gear, grabbed our fish (which turned out to be 1 cm over the required size so they did let us keep it) and headed back to the apartment to prep "Bob" (Laila named him) for dinner. Had a swim in the pool, cooked Bob on the bar-bie, along with some lamb and sausages, chilled out for awhile, and off to bed.