Fishing in the surf in Beach Haven, NJ 2 years ago and the palce had been swarmed by what the papers were calling eagle rays or cow-nosed rays (I still don't know which one. One local paper claimed eagle, the other claimed cow-nosed) claiming that the rays were repeatedly breaking off and only the small ones were being brought in that weighed around 60-80 lbs! (
) It was also nearing impossible to swim w/o hitting into one. So me and a few guys that were staying around the same jetty decided to take a trip to the bait shop a couple blocks away and pick up 40lb test (40lb was the highest the bait shop had the owner said she didn't think any one would ever need higher) to put on our rods, and since I needed a new reel i picked up one that would hold a lot of 40lb test. We went back to the beach and I was the first one to hook up. It immediatly stripped out 200 yards of line out easily. According to one spectator (the beauty of fishing on the beach is that every one on the beach comes over to watch) I fought it for around an hour 45 minutes. I brought it into the breakers 3 times just to have it stripped about 100 yards of line back out again until finally I had it in past the closest breakers where we saw another ray appear to go after the bait that had slid up the line. I don't know if the line snapped on its own or that second ray cut it
. I always carry a similar outfit with me in case those rays ever come back.
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