We do down here, my brother has one he spent a couple of grand on, it can carry a 5 or 10-lb bait is what I believe he said. Pretty much all the serious shark fishermen use them for taking bait out past the surf, up to half a mile or more, usually over 1000 yards.
In younger -- and maybe braver (stupider?) -- days, we used to do it with a kayak. Not tons of fun in the dark, but worth the fish.
Brings back memories. Shark fishing was popular back in the 70's where I grew up. It was pretty spooky paddling several large shark baits out through the surf on a pitch black night. The movie Jaws was just released. Made you think of the scary theme song when you were out there dropping the bloody baits off the kayak in the dark.
When the moon was really lighting things up, you could see shadows swimming under the kayak. They could've been anything but I always imagined it was big sharks. We also used to wade fish in the dark, between knee and thy deep, which looking back now, was way stupider than running the kayaks out past the third bar with a headlamp!
Ironically, the biggest Snook I ever caught inhaled a shark bait off Sanibel. 30 pounds.
