This week I am hoping to catch a shark from a Cape Cod beach, and the wind is looking promising for Wednesday. NOAA is predicting northwest winds of up to 20 knots during the day on Wednesday, dying down to 5-10 knots after sunset. The northwest breeze ought to make fishing Cape Cod's southside much easier, because a northwest wind is blowing offshore.

I am hoping that an offshore breeze in this area of the Cape will blow all the mung and sea weed away from the beach. In addition, an offshore wind will grant me the opportunity to float baits under balloons a hundred or so yards from the shoreline. Sea conditions in close to shore will be relatively calm, which will make the entire fishing experience much easier.

My plan is to wait for the NW wind and start fishing Wednesday evening. Between now and then I will be gathering gear and prepping my equipment for a brand of Cape Cod surf casting that I have never done before.

Shark Fishing Rods & Reels

I'm not about to drop a thousand dollars on new rods and reels to catch a shark. Instead I am going to use the equipment I already have on hand, just in a different way. I think the spinning rods and reels I have used for school bluefin tuna ought to get the job done just fine.

The Penn 9500 has handled tunas of up to 150 pounds without any issues, so that will be one reel I definitely plan on bringing to the beach on Wednesday. This reel has plenty of line capacity and a very powerful drag system that can withstand blistering runs and long, drawn out fights.

The other reel I plan on using is the Fin-Nor Offshore 9500 spinning reel. This reel is comparable to the Penn 9500, but is in my opinion slightly "beefier" and capable of handling slightly larger fish.

For rods I will once again be re-purposing what I already own. The Ugly Stik Tiger 7 foot medium action spinning rod has worked well on football size tuna of less than 100 pounds. I will admit that this rod lacked the backbone necessary to fight larger tuna, but I think it will do just fine on brown sharks, which for the most part weigh less than 250 pounds.

Another rod I will be using is a custom spinning rod that I purchased from an awfully nice and generous gentleman by the name Ron Braun. I really have no idea about the specs of this rod, but it is slightly beefier than the above mentioned Ugly Stik and is better suited for fighting tuna in the 150 pound class. So I think it will work just fine for sharks. If you'd like more information about this spinning rod just email me at [email protected] and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks to a comment left on my last blog post about shark fishing by Kyle Woodhead, I am now a big fan of tx-sharkfishing.com. These guys fish down in Texas and have caught sharks of up to 12 feet in length from shore. I owe a big thanks to Kyle for letting me know about them.

TX-sharkfishing has a great page about the rods and reels they use for catching huge sharks from shore. If you are serious about outfitting yourself with the best rods and reels for catching sharks from shore, then I highly recommend giving this page a read.

Line & Leader

The Penn 9500 and the Fin-Nor Offshore 9500 spinning reels are perfectly suited for braided line. I will be loading these reels up with 80lb Power Pro since that is what I already have in my basement. I think 80lb will be plenty of strength and I should be able to get around 500 yards of 80lb braid onto each reel.

I plan on using a Slim Beauty Knot to connect the braid to a 10 foot long section of 100 pound mono-filament leader. I figure a 10 foot long section of  mono should be sufficient, considering the size of the brown sharks I'll be targeting are at max about 7 feet in length. The leader will help protect the line from chaffing against the shark's body.

I've read that some folks don't use wire or cable on the business end of their leader, and instead rely on a circle hook to keep the line away from the shark's super sharp teeth. This is fine for them, but I know that I will feel much more confident integrating wire or cable into my setup.

For this first go-around at shark fishing from shore I am going to utilize a 3 foot long section of 220 pound wire, since I already have some in my basement. If I really get into shark fishing Cape Cod's beaches, then I will start implementing a leader setup like the guys from tx-sharkfishing.com are using, which you can check out here.

Hooks

For brown sharks on Cape Cod I will be using an 8/0 Gamakatsu Live Bait Heavy Duty (HD) Circle Hook. As recommended by the guys at tx-sharkfishing.com, I am going to wrap the shank of the hook in black electrical tape (which I have not yet done in the above photo). The electrical tape will help to reduce the magnetic zap that the shark feels when he bites down on the hook. According to the tx-sharkfishing.com guys this will dramatically increase one's hookup ratio.

I'm going to keep things simple when connecting the hook to the wire leader. As seen above, I have simply inserted the wire through the eye of the hook, and wrapped it 10 times around itself.

Presentation

If the wind works in my favor Wednesday evening, as it is predicted to, I should be able to float a fresh dead pogie way offshore using a simple balloon setup. Again, big thanks to MFCC blog reader Kyle for the idea (you can read more of Kyle's recommendations by clicking here).

The concept is pretty simple, use a balloon in sort of the same way one would use a bobber when fishing a freshwater pond. The balloon keeps the bait off the bottom, and is pushed offshore by the wind. Since I plan on fishing a beach where I will have the wind blowing offshore, the balloon will take my bait away from the beach towards the depths.

Another option would be to use a small boat or a kayak to bring the bait offshore. Yet for this first go around I think I will fish one balloon bait far out, and another bait in closer to the beach. Yet who knows, maybe I'll end up bringing my 8 foot row boat with me-we'll see.

I'll talk more about presentation and the actual process of setting baits in the My Fishing Cape Cod extended fishing report, which I will write up after I fish on Wednesday.

What do you think? Let me know by leaving a comment below, and if I can help in any way please just ask.

Tight lines and take care,

Ryan