Have noticed on reading on this site that some of you guys south of the border CA/US fish for sharks. We have them up here ( dog fish) but do not want them on our gear. What do you do with them on catching. Are they a food source? If so how are they prepared? I believe they have to be dressed and skinned quickly to avoid issue with spoilage and taste. Anyway, just curious as up here they can be a pain in the butt on salmon gear and are attracted to any bait fish used. So in areas of the "dogs we switch to metal or rubber gear or try trolling a little faster. Cheers, trapper
Shark Fishing
- Thread starter trapper
- Start date
Ok guys, no one wants to talk about fishing for sharks. Is this a tabu subject? Is it secret stuff? Is it only for the brave? Come on, it is time to spill the beans! Maybe it needs to be in a private message. :lol: trapper
Food quality: Yes Mako (above) and Thresher (below) are excellent. Most other large sharks are inedible due to their physiology which allows urine to pass through their flesh.
The Dogfish you are catching now are are also quite good, in fact in Great Britain, the "fish and chips" served in most shops is made with Dogfish.
You need to bleed them out and fillet them as soon as they come off the hook, and keep the meat on ice at all times.
Targeting large Sharks:
Drift over structure while setting a chum slick with ground menhaden (or mackerel). Sweeten the slick with chunks of cut up menhaden.
Bait with whole mackerel or Bluefish fillets. Set out 3 rods on floats, one deep, one mid depth, one shallow. Have a fourth rod rigged and ready to go to pitch-cast out to any Sharks seen close to the boat.
Crack a cold one (or several) and wait.
Shark fishing is hours of boredom interrupted by periods of shear mayhem!
We had a 4' shark jump directly into my boat yesterday. I think it was following a full cast net up. Quite exciting!
Thank you Finest Kind for the great responce to my questions. Was glad to hear they are caught for human consumption not just to catch and kill. It sound a bit like my commercial fishing days which could be "hours of boredom followed my minutes of panic.
I know there is huge shark maiming and killing in the "shark fin soup" trade perpetuated by some ancient and foolish belief that destroy thousands of these fish. I find the practise to be disgusting and horribly cruel. I am certainly not suggesting the sport of catching and enjoying this fishery has anything to do with the other. Just very aware and would very much like to see it stopped. My rant for the week! Thanks trapper
I know there is huge shark maiming and killing in the "shark fin soup" trade perpetuated by some ancient and foolish belief that destroy thousands of these fish. I find the practise to be disgusting and horribly cruel. I am certainly not suggesting the sport of catching and enjoying this fishery has anything to do with the other. Just very aware and would very much like to see it stopped. My rant for the week! Thanks trapper
trapper said:
You are welcome sir. I agree... the commercial "fining" practice is barbaric and wasteful.
As a Sport Fisherman, I enjoy the hunt and the fight with these great creatures, and support their conservation.
If you look closely to the pic of the Mako I posted, you will see a yellow tag sticking out of his back. This tag contains a number corresponding to the data we filled out on a card that gets mailed in and recorded by NOAA.
We have tagged and released dozens of sharks, and got back a couple of tags over the years.
One Mako shark which we tagged off the coast of New Jersey was recaptured (and killed for its meat) several months later off the coast of Spain, and one Blue Shark which we also tagged off NJ was recaptured, re-tagged and re-released the next day after we caught it a hundred miles away off the coast of Long Island, New York.
Info about the tagging program on where to get tags here:
http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/nefsc/Narraga ... tions.html
As far as killing the fish for food goes, me and my buddies who fish together usually kill only 1 shark per season and split the meat up among our families and friends. Although not everyone agrees, in my opinion Mako is actually MUCH better than the Thresher which has (to me) a rubbery consistency....In fact, that pic of the Tresher posted is from 5 years ago, and I have not killed another one on my boat since then....but Catching them? WOW, what a STRONG fish! They jump just a much as a Mako, and are actually harder to land as they have more stamina.
Up here in the northeast large blue sharks are a constant battle while fishing for tuna. They come in and trash our leaders and mono very quickly. Gun shots are heard routinely as they will sometime not relent even after being hooked several times. Many of these sharks already have 4 or 5 tuna hooks sticking out of their jaws.
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Once again thank you for your realistic approach to this shark fishery. Sounds like an action packed event with one on the line. Glad to see personal conservation measures are in place. I do understand the frustration of having sharks take the bait when fishing. We use to have a lot of dog fish taking bait in the 70s and 80s but I have not hooked a "dog" in some time, I do believe there is a commercial fishery or was, which maybe changed the numbers. The blue is certainly a much more attractive looking fish than our dogs which I have never put to the frying pan. Fish on my friends! Cheers trapper