I spent last week in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Of course, I couldn’t resist doing some fishing.

I can’t spend time on the beach without taking a few casts, and renting an Ocean Kayak makes for great fun. Of course, combining the two is serious fun. Either alone or with my son, I’d head out past the breakers and throw some metal. Bluefish and Spanish mackerel were eager to hit no matter when I was out there, and I got plenty of 1lb-2lb fish. I could spend all day out there.

While on the beach or in the water, I spotted a lot of Manta Rays. They frequently jump out of the water were easy to spot. They’re big…20lbs…So you can’t miss them.

The highlight of the fishing trip was on a fishing pier. I was only catching a great variety of fish on the pier…Bluefish, croaker, mackerel, kingfish, spot, pinfish. There were also a lot of Manta Rays around. I wanted to get one… I had a quality outfit with 30lb braid, and I thought I could land one.

Well, instead of hooking into a Manta Ray I hook into a Butterfly Ray and it’s easily over 100lbs. This Butterfly Ray was the size of my kitchen table. I’m sure it could have stripped my reel in a minute, but it didn’t seem too motivated to get away. I fought the fish for an hour, repeatedly pulling it off the bottom and then having it swim back down. Then I came to the conclusion that, even if I could tire out this fish, I wasn’t lifting it 20 feet up on to the fishing pier. I locked my drag and let it break off.

This was probably the biggest fish I’ve hooked into. Not a great fighting fish, but it made up for that in size. And it was amazing to look down on this behemoth from above on the fishing pier.