Gday kev,
Your bloody dedset right about those rays going off as soon as they know that they were hooked .When we were staying at Yamba we used to go down to the fish cleaning bench at night and watch the rays at high tide come up under the light then we would throw out some gang hooks baited with a full squid and connected to some whipper snipper cord (which was the biggest we could find ).As soon as you threw out the bait the unsuspecting ray would cruise over and just sit on top of the bait.We would give it 10 seconds and then give it a tug.Mate you should have seen these things go #.as soon as it felt the pressure it took off and im talking jumping out of the water and skimming #along the surface only for every time this happened we got busted off.It was boody great fun and good for a laugh.
MIKOS