Sharking : Deep Water Inshore

We left Saunderfoot loaded with heavy wrecking outfits and bottles of pilchard oil , we stopped in the bay to feather up so mackerel and then preceded at full steam to our first mark.

We dropped anchor some 8 miles out of soundersfoot over a deep reef i laid down some chopped fish and oil using the plastic bag technique made popular by John Wilson you basically feed a line throw a plastic bag push it throw the bottom clip on a weight fill the bag under tension with your ground bait hold it closed as you let it down into the water the water pressure continues to keep it closed as you then let it the whole way to the bottom wear up on you strike the rod inverting the bag and dropping the contents out over the sea bed i put down 4 of these and then hung a couple of sacks of the stern this combined with a couple of fish oil bottles on the anchor rope completed our invitation.

This was supplemented by the deck hand chopping mackerel and throwing a hand full over the side every so often.

I had brought a varied array of gear i had not been able to find much in the way of information on inshore porbeagle fishing so i hadn't brought my big Atlantic guns with me for one thing the water was a lot shallower so i had 4 tld 25 to pen 50lb tuna sticks and a light weight 20lb outfit for bottom fishing and tope.

Some of my inshore kit plus a big guns Daiwa outfit on the far left of the picture.

The tope outfit i put a 8/0 bronzed hook which i had reshaped the point to a knife point as im sure no one was telling the porbies this was only for tope. This was crimped to 4ft of 350lb stainless cable to this was crimped 600lb commercial nylon 9 ft trace knotted and glued to 50lb mono this i hoped would give me a decent rubbing leader plus a lot more stretch at close range, for tope the trace was a overkill for shark it was under gunned hopefully it fitted in the middle. i then ran a 10oz lead on the line and here it is and i know some of you aren't gonna like this but its by far the best bait ive found i hooked on a live mackerel through the back with shallow slashes down its side. i let the whole lot gently down to the sea bed bounced the weight away form the boat for about 8 yards and placed the rod down in with the lever drag on just enough to resist the tide with the ratchet on.

I then put out 3 shark rods one on a float about 90 yds back form the boat and about 50ft deep, 1 with a free swimming mackerel on with just a 4oz barrel weight on to take her down and finally one dead to the bottom with 11oz of lead on with a 4lb odd pollock flapper for bait.

All the traces on the shark gear were the same 8ft 600lb stainless cable 12/0 southern tuna hand sharpened and a 600lb BG swivel, this was then clipped to a 10ft running trace of 600lb commercial nylon back in the days when i believed in it.

The skipper put over a light bottom rod and started catching rays and then got bitten off twice and all went silent for about an hour. Then i had a dropped run on the tope rod the bait came back sliced in half. after another hour we had had nothing and then the rays and bottom fish came back and the mackerel started feeding again, i knew we had missed our chance and what ever had been lurking around had gone i felt we should more i talked to the skipper he agreed and we motored another 5 miles further out to another deep mark witch has a fast rip we anchored just off the rip and baited up as described earlier the gear went back down with fresh baits only this time no bottom fish showed up nothing not even a mackerel. After 10 minuets the skipper pointed and there not 10 ft under the surface was a tope swimming along i had never seen tope so close to the top before.

Then the stern deep rod roared off there was no question in my mind it was a shark run i struck into her and the pen stick bucked over as i felt real weight at the end she shock her head then she took off again the tld was half empty i couldn't put more pressure on her then she stopped and i felt it that horrible bouncing and grating when they role and all went slack i put the rod down and sat with my head in my knees i knew what i had lost that was no tope and no conger it had been what we were there for a shark. I reeled in the line and the 600lb rubbing leader had been bitten through half way up its length and above it was very badly abraded. We had no more runs that day and when we came back the next week all we had were rays. The boat was two brothers she is expensive for a inshore boat but shes a good boat and the skipper is one of the best.

Sharking: Have you got the bottle.

 

Another trick i learnt while out with andy and extended a bit while out in Cornwall is to get a large water bottle cut holes in the side then make up a mix of 30% vegetable oil and 70% pilchard oil and then mix horse bran with this till you have a good liquid sludge like potato soup put a small hole in the neck of the bottle and a slightly larger one near the base tie a line round it cleat the line of or tie it to the gunnel or whatever and throw the bottle full of sludge over board run one each side of the rods this puts out the most amazing surface trail.

In Cornwall i adjusted this pattern slightly and put a 1lb ball weight on the bottom of a line and tied 7 of these bottle on and hung them at about 100 ft spaced out at 10 feet apart and hung them up near the cabin this did seem very effective it is a pain to refill them and you need to make sure the holes are small so they don't get washed out to fast.

On a side note when i was trolling plastics with gemini in the hope of finally finding a mako we did similar things with bottle of the stern with just a small hole popped in the top and pre mixed the oil but left out the bran. On those 3 trips we had nothing but then im not sure that was a fair test and id like to do some more trolling in the future with big plastics rigged with live baits.

Making up dubby and bottles on the Diane [ PS. Another boat i wouldn’t recommend ] for inshore wreaking for porby's.

Sharking: Soaked Baits

Last year while out with white water we were having a very slow day. I had the usual pattern of rods out 4 off the back and one deep near the cabin. The shallow rod i decided to give my experimental bait a go on and in about 20 mins a fin came form the opposite direction of the dubby trial at speed and hit the rod i landed a small blue about 50lbs and stuck another bait out to be hit by a porbeagle of about the same size 5 mins later.

The bait

Take herrings or other soft fleshed fish place in big freezer bags and cover with pilchard oil mixed with vegetable oil 50/50 leave for 1 hour and then stick in the freezer leave over night pack in ice and take fishing they wont freeze solid because there saturated with oil.

 

The Why

Well we used to do this with Pike bait and it always was effective so I decided to give it a try my personal view is that the drift that takes the top layer of the sea the section most of the trail is floating in quite often is moving in a different direction to the layer the baits are sitting in as can be seen for the blue above we saw her coming for a fair distance and she wasn't in the trail she came smashing in from the side.

It is interesting that it was some 3 hours before we had a shark in the conventional trail on a conventional bait. It needs more testing but its one ill be using a lot more i think.

Sharking: Attractants

 

I owe a lot of what i know about sharking to Andrew skipper of white water but i would like to share some of what i found out last year here.

Rubby Dubby :

Ok this can be a as simple or as complex as you like here is what we do. [ Credit to Andrew for the base recipe i have tweaked a bit]

Horse bran 1/4 - 1/2 sack 

chopped fish preferably , mackerel but pollock , herring seem to work well to. [ Doesn't have to be fresh but shouldn't be rotten either ]

1 lt of concentrated pilchard oil [ Ammo seems the best bet but its expensive ]

That's the standard mix here's the bits I’ve added on the last few trips.

Chicken Pellets [ Made form fish meal ] I prefer carp fishing halibut pellets but there expensive, but there dense and they take the oil right down fast [5kg - £10.00] [http://www.bristolbaitsupplies.co.uk/pellets.htm] I soak these in pilchard oil for 72 hours and then stir in 4lbs of fish meal and builders sand till the mixture is cohesive slop, this i then mix half with the rubby dubby and spoon the other half out the back of the boat i generally take 25 k. It puts out a trail like you wont believe.

My motives for this is that i personally believe that the average sharking trip doesn't give you the time to get bait down to the big ocean predators that are down deep this mix gets the sent down to cover the deep baits fast.

Sharking : Some More Sharks

I mentioned in a previous article that over 6 trips I had landed over 3000lb'd of sharks last year I have been asked if i have some pictures so I have put a few of them here.

Biggest blue we had several others over 100lb they don't even compare to the porbeagles.

A smaller blue the colours on these fish are superb.

In truth these fish didn't stand a chance on the 50lb stand up's if i was targeting them i think i would drop to 30lb outfits with lots of line, but as they say i wasn't to me they got in the way much like dog fish do when your after conger.

Landed one and the other rod goes , Andrew the skipper on the left mike at the back and me to the right. Mike was our deck hand on one of our trips another top guy with loads of sharking experience.

Tiny blue

At this point she was deep it was 40mins into the fight and i couldn't move her.

Yet another blue.

Estimated at 150lb this big boy was my introduction to sharking.

You can see the tailor we used to bring her aboard.

Pen tuna sticks nice kit , the crew look on as yet another blue says hi.

15 miles into St Georges channel on saber tooth a porby heads for Ireland [ PS. i dont recommend this boat ] note the shamano duel speed nice reels but i now use the diawa.

Laying into a blue on her second run, like canning peas with the 50lb kit it is way to heavy for these small sharks.

A Porby test the metal of a 50lb class kit as i try to get back some line. I fight sharks hard i feel it is better for them long drawn out fights leave them to nakered and then its first aid time with the deck hose, that having been said this fish took 1hr 10 to land, must of had her greens.

A small Porby

Shes going deep

shark rolling

fast fish

some of my kit in the early days.

Sharking : Teeth Wire and deep blue Seas

The real screamed! I was stood by the rod just bringing the other rods in i do wonder whether the fish had seen the flappers as I wound them in and had rushed down the trail to find the distance rod with its big mackerel flapper some 150 ft below the surface of the ocean. The real was emptying fast the skipper was in White Waters cabin preparing to set sail back to Milford haven and the calm waters of the marina, I picked up the rod and pushed the drag up to strike i then slammed into the fish the first strike I knew would not have set the big hook so i would down again and pumped the rod upwards again and again till the fish finished its frantic attempts at shedding the forged steel razor sharp hook and powered off once more. The skipper was now by my side strapping on my oversized butt pad and back harness the lugs snapped into the real as the fish stopped for a second and i got a chance to pump a few yards of line back on the half empty real.

For the next 30 minutes there was nothing i could do with her every time i got a few turns of line back on the real she ripped another 20 yds off then she swam up to the boat but stayed deep the skipper said wait for it she's just coming for a look sure enough 50 or so feet down we saw a flash of blue or ' Colour' as its known in big game circles i laid into her hard trying to keep her off balance the skipper looked knowingly at me as if to say 'save your energy she's going to do it'. As predicted a few seconds later she turned again the deep blue of her back now making her virtually invisible as she kicked her big tail and dived push a turbo charged shot of water though her big gills, she kept going she must have been virtually scrapping the bottom when at last she stopped, I put as much pressure on her as the 50lb mono would allow, the sweat at this point purring off of me but she ignored me and took off the hard won line yet again spilled from the big multiplier.

We continued this game of me pulling her 5 yards and her taking another 10 for about 30 minutes i was completely knackered at this point and i knew two things from events earlier in the day one that if i lost my patience with a big fish i would lose it and two that this was a very big fish. She made 3 more big runs each time with me fighting for every yard of line to bring her back to the boat. The forth run as about 50 yards and the skipper said now, now give her some shit son, go on lay into her so i pushed the real back up into the higher gear ratio pumped the rod till my arms burned i knew i had her she came to me with big wide shakes of her head but she had had enough, she was all in and then she was beside the boat what a beautiful sight as i touched the leader she was mine.

This was the last fish of my first sharking trip with whitewater see links below, in total over 6 days and 2 boats i boated over 3000lb in weight of sharks, i had some painful lessons when it came to tackle the main one i think being 'these are deep water sharks you need lots and lots of line'. Andrew is a top guy if you can get out with him you should.

I haven't been able to go this year due to a nasty divorce and having to cancel trips, i hope to try to get out next year if Andrew has any slots. I have managed to get out on a couple of other boats this year. I hope in 2008 /9 to go to Kenya for tigers as well watch this space.

Tackle

I have been asked about the setup and tackle i use while sharking so i have included some diagrams and am happy to answer questions and supply addresses for suppliers etc।

Drifting Setup

A plastic drinks bottle is attached to a knotted 10lb weak link this is attached to a clip and clipped to slip freely on the line at the right depth a peice of cocktail stick is used to jam large piece about 2 inchs of runner tube on to the line in such away that when the shark hits it the line pulls out of the the tube and the float slides free. Electrical earthing wire insulation is good for the tube the green and yellow stuff.

Trace Build Diagram

A length [8ft] of 400/600 lb wire is treble crimped with a 600lb swivel on this slides two 4oz barrel weights the other end of the swivel is crimped to a 600/800lb swivel snap. This is the running wire the length of this can be adjusted to suit. Clipped to this is another 600lb swivel triple crimped to this is a length [8ft] of 600/800lb wire i twist the last 2 ft back over its self to give a double thickness if anyone wants a better diagram of this i can send it email me at this end i place a 12/0 southern tuna hook with the bard crimped down and hand sharpened to a knife point all crimp points also have off shore knots applied again i can supply more detail on this if required. [ Hook size vary on bait size ]

Use full links:

Good information site

http://seaanglingorkney.com/species/shark.shtml

For lots of sharks this is the guy see the story above:

http://www.whitewatercharters.co.uk/

This is the place to go for gear i recommend 50lb outfits but Paul can kit you up for what you need , the only word of warning is there standard shop built sharking traces are to short and the nylon running leaders they recommend leave you liable to bite off, but if you tell Paul you need 16ft traces of 600lb stainless cable with a 600lb clip after 6ft with each connection double crimped you should be ok i would also recommend asking for the addition of running barrel weights on the running length of not less than 4 oz. Anyway he’s a good guy and i personally use the diawa big game reels and the star plasma rods from him. Real should hold at least 600m of 50lb line and be dual speed in my view. I also use a little 30lb outfit for the shallow rod this is a shamano tlb 25 loaded with 30lb mono this tends to get hit by blues but has enough beef in it should something a bit tastier come along. On my last few trips i have also put a 80lb outfit deep below the 200ft line, but that is because i believe there are big shocks weighting down there i bait this with a 10lb Pollock or there about.
Anyway Paul can help you out with anything you need.

here is his details :

UNITED KINGDOM Rok-Max (UK) Ltd PO Box 87 Truro, Cornwall, UK Tel: 44 (0) 1872 864422 Fax: 44 (0)1872 865845 http://www.rokmax.com/ enquiries@rokmax.com

God Came a Knocking

It was wet i remember the rain had run down the back of my coat and was soaking into the lining of my T- shirt. My feet kept rhythmically hitting the pavement one after another i knew in truth walking round a oval road was well stupid, but i coulden’t think of any better way of venting my anger other than hitting someone. The rain got heavier its intensity now driving it though my lightweight summer jacket, i shivered as i moved the cold almost slimy T-shirt now a sodden rag.

She was walking the other way i took no notice at first but then she crossed over and stood directly in my path i put my head down and barged past. She shouted after me “ had she really said that surly not “ then her voice reached me again “ You can walk away form me but you can t walk away form jesus you know” i was like bloody fruit loop what drugs is she on as i forced my way forward against the now almost horizontal sheet of rain.

The sound at first was hidden up by the rain but then i heard it another set of footsteps drawing closer obviously trying to catch up with me then she was there her hair soaked her jacket offering even less protection than mine form the advancing rain. She shuck her golden hair form her face a stubborn strand remained plastered to her nose that she was forced to remove with a carefree wipe of her palm.

Her voice chirpy and cheerful and irritating once again decided to spoil the dismal night “so what you doing out here wondering round getting wet and in a circle of all things?” i really wanted to ignore her to carry on my pointless trek but i didn’t i couldn’t and like all these things once one word spills form your lips it all comes tripping over its self like a uncontrolled flood and so it was i found my self telling her of the ferrets i had purchased of my dad going mad and yelling at me of all the other misadventures the day had choose to lumber upon me.

She listened and said not a word and then she started telling me of Jesus of how he had died for my sins and how he was there for me and how even now he cried at my pain, how he loved me beyond measure. And she talked at me i was mesmerised to think this god this creator of universes cared about me. I can not remember how long this had gone on but the darkest part of night had long since banished the rain when it was i found myself at a curates house with her giving my life to Jesus and inviting him into my life as my lord and saviour this was some 16 years ago and he is still there today never changing his arms about me to love , to protect and to guide and i am at his service 24 hours a day for he is my true father.