Shark Fishing Tips ( 1 of 2 )

Shark fishing is one of the most exciting forms of So. California angling you can do. The fish are big ( makos and threshers ) fight hard, jump frequently, and taste wonderful, and there are plenty of them out there.

Unlike marlin, whose anglers average one fish every three days, I have caught 15 large sharks in a day ( 14 released ) and average 5 to 6 a day. These are large slow growing fish, and most should be released, keeping a small fish for dinners for a couple of days, and letting all the larger breeding specimens go to repopulate the ocean. Most of the smaller fish end up being food for the big boys anyway, so if I am going to harvest one, it will be one of the small ones.

The larger fish are too precious to the ocean environment, to catch once and eat. If you want a picture, leave the fish in the water and after taking a couple of pictures, cut the wire near the mouth and let it go. Do not bring the fish into the boat, his thrashing around on the deck can seriously injure or kill the fish even hours later. Please treat these special fish gently, ( all fish are special, and need to be treated gently before release, so they can live to fight another day ) so our children and grandchildren can have the thrill of catching one of these magnificent creatures.

There are many kinds of sharks here in Southern California, but my favorites are the Mako and Thresher, they are fairly numerous, can be caught in a variety of ways, and are great fighters. And I may add, they are awesome on the dinner table. Even a small shark is much larger than most of the other species we catch here in Southern California.

It is a beautiful July day on the Pacific Ocean, we are about fifteen miles offshore. There is a gentle breeze blowing in from the southwest, just enough to keep us cool, and move the boat along at a perfect speed to set a chum line for sharks. For a full days fishing I usually buy two four gallon chum buckets produced by "New Fishall Bait Company", this is the best chum you can buy here in my area.

These chum buckets also work for more than sharks, I find they can double your catches of bass and other game fish when your boat is at anchor, or drifting. All you have to do is cut several one inch holes in the bottom of a frozen bucket, tie it over the side of the boat about 1/2 in the water and they will put out a chum slick all day.

This not only puts a scent trail in the water the game fish can follow to your boat, which is great but also attracts a variety of small bait fish to the boat, that hang around and feed on the chum and they also become part of the chum trail. When the larger fish come up the chum line and see all the little fish swimming around your boat, the dinner bell goes off for them. You also have a ready supply of live bait usually not available at the bait dock.

A light spinning rod and a small hook with a small strip of squid works great for mackerel, and a #12 hook with a squid tentacle works wonders on smelt.

Back to our shark fishing trip: Our chum slik has been doing its magic for about an hour when suddenly the clicker goes off zzzzzzz, we let the shark have about twenty feet of line, put the reel in gear, and the line comes tight and the 12/O circle hook sets in the corner of the sharks' mouth ( no need for a strong hook set with a circle hook, just let the line get tight and the hook sets perfectly in the corner of the mouth )

Another advantage of circle hooks is if you miss the fish the hook isn't pulled out of the bait and the fish usually comes right back and eats the bait again. When the Mako feels the hook he goes airborne, sometimes ten to fifteen feet in the air. Now he takes off on a long reel smoking run, in less than one minute a hundred yards of line is gone from the reel, your heart is going almost as fast as the line going off the reel.

Twenty five minutes later theshark is at boat side, he looks to be about one hundred and fifty pounds. We quickly take a couple of pictures and let this one go by cutting the leader six inches from the hook, we usually don't kill fish this big as they are spawning size and are important fish for replenishing the species in our local waters. Most of the anglers who fish with me are sport fishermen and let most of the fish they catch go, keeping mostly smaller fish that have been hooked deep and have a poor chance of surviving when released.

The days of filling the freezer are over if we want to be able to catch anything ten years from now, or have a decent chance of seeing our grandchildren have the thrill of catching these wonderful game fish we cherish so much. So remember keep a few for dinner, let all the big ones go to produce the next generations thrills, and cherish every moment you spend fishing.

As you pull your boat out of the harbor and see the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean stretch out to the horizon, and you know it goes for thousands of miles past the horizon, you ask yourself a question, Where do I look for sharks in this vast expanse of water? Fishery biologists tell us that more than 90% of the ocean is barren of fish ( this is also true of lakes and rivers, 90% of the fish is concentrated in 10% of the ecosystem )

What you are looking for is a concentration point. Rivers, lakes, bays, oceans, the fish will mostly be at concentration points. A concentration point is any place that will serve to make fish hang out in a certain place. It can be as big as a rocky point jutting out in the ocean from the shore, or as small as a floating kelp paddy the size of your kitchen table.

It can be as small as a floating buoy or an underwater mountain that is 100's of feet from the surface. Why do fish hang out around these spots? What makes them different from another spot nearby? One word, FOOD!

All bodies of water have a food chain, plankton are eaten by minnows, minnows are eaten by small fish, small fish are eaten by larger fish, and they are eaten by sharks. Find a concentration point for plankton and you have a good area to look for larger predators. An underwater bank or island, causes deep currents to flow to the surface, and bring nutrient rich water up to areas where there are very little nutrients. The bait fish concentrate there to feed on the rich plankton feast from below, the game fish come to eat the minnows and the sharks are there to eat them.

Floating kelp paddys concentrate fish in another way, imagine a mouse or rabbit out in the middle of an empty field, an easy meal for any predator as there is no place to hide. It is the same for bait fish out in the middle of an empty ocean, no place to hide! Now picture a large piece of float ing kelp, just like a brier patch in the field hides our mouse, the kelp paddy gives the minnows a place to hide. I have seen giant schools of minnows swimming around under kelp paddys. This is the grocery store for game fish in the area where no other cover is available. The bottom is 100'S or 1000,S of feet below.There is no other place to hide. A paddy in the open ocean is good, a paddy floating over a bank or other under water structure that causes nutrient rich water to flow up to the surface is prime!Now we are out in the ocean heading for an underwater bank that is about 20 miles off shore. We do not just blindly drive to a prearranged spot, we are looking for signs of life, birds, dolphins, seals, minnows puddling on the surface, ( small fish making little feeding splashes on the surface ) for every minnow you see on the surface there is usually 1000 underwater. We are also looking for current slicks or scum lines. This is where two currents come together and go down leaving a lot of trash floating where they meet. This is also a place where plankton is trapped and the small fish come to feed. If I see a good looking scum line when I am on my way to somewhere else I may stop and troll along the line for a while. If I catch a fish or see lots of life below the surface, I may put out a chum slick for a while, since I saw fish up and feeding. But unless I see or hook a shark quickly, I will usually take a hike and go on to a spot I know has given up sharks in the past.

By the time I get to where I want to fish, I will have three rods rigged and ready. I don't usually put a shark rod in the water untill I see a mako come to the boat, that really cuts down on the number of blues we catch. If you just want to catch a shark, and don't care about what kind you catch, by all means put several lines in the water. Just come prepared with lots of hooks and leaders. I usually cut the singlestrand, leader about 5 or 6' from the hook, and let the shark swim free.