MAKO CHAOS    “THIRD  TIME  LUCKY”

by The Teller of Truths

“He was built as a swordfish, except for his huge jaws which were tight shut now as he swam fast, just under the surface with his high dorsal fin knifing through the water without wavering. Inside the closed double lip of his jaws all of his eight rows of teeth were slanted inwards. They were not like the ordinary pyramid-shaped teeth of most sharks. They were shaped as a man’s fingers when they are crisped like claws.”   (Thus wrote Ernest Hemmingway in The Old Man And The Sea.)

Makos are an occasional visitor to Lae. I have only ever had three encounters with them in the twenty years that I regularly fished there, and possibly two of these incidents were clashes with the same fish. Then again, we never went looking for them either. Perhaps sometime someone will raise another?

 It is July 13th, 1985. The Jewfish are on a hot bite here at the Busu River this morning. You know, BANG --WALLOP-- BANG and they’re on. Here’s one of them. Perambulate your optics around those juicy fillets.

The box holds eight and three more never made it to the top. Sharks! I button on fresh baits and chuck the shrapnel over. Forty yards of hand line slide through fingers, then a small nick in it catches my attention the way a tadpole paddling around in your beer might. Woops! --- we can’t have this! I whip several turns of mono around the rowlock pin, then cut and splice. In a few moments the mono stretches tight and the boat rocks. The rowlock pin begins to swivel and groan.  “Ahhhh Sooo!”  Throw a few more turns of the line around it and hasten to twirl the double blood knot, spit, and yank it up tight. The pin continues to grind in its’ sleeve, then spins and settles when I release the strain and the line whips off. “Yep. There’s a good fish on here,” I say to John Koch, my 6’-5” deckie fresh up from Adelaide.”

My line is tight down into the briny, starting to angle. Suddenly a welter of white water erupts with the sound of a Cessna going in at 160 about 20 yds behind us. A mass of froth and bubbles boil and subside as a sudden hole in the Huon Gulf closes up. My two companions bellow  “SHARK!”

Don’t ask how it has time to perform the manoeuvre, but in about 4 seconds flat this little 5-foot something shark explodes back out doing two complete cartwheels in the time it takes to clear a height of 12 ft, lashing ferociously back and forth sawing through the terminal wires. It comes back down with another resounding KEE-RASH. Dismembered tackle falls to the water some distance away. What a Royal Command Performance! The water levels out again and that is the end of it. Dramatic silence.

By the hairy knucklebones of Ned Kelly and all the galloping kunai this side of The Kassam Pass I have never witnessed such a violent display of pure ferocity, exploding water, and Son-Of-A-Gun aerial gymnastics of the highest order as we did at the end of a fishing line that morning.

 “Bee-rutha, John! There must be a limit to the amount of cold water that can be vaporized in the shortest possible time by a given sized fish. I think we saw it just now.”

It was all too fast, unexpected, and brief to pick any details, but the action alone spelled those three magic words, “Short Fin Mako”, the ‘ne plus ultra’ of game fish for many anglers, however far it may have been from its’ accustomed haunts, the wide blue, mid-oceanic yonder. Certainly not the Every Day garden variety of shark found in the murky inner Gulf waters here.

She was a slim 20?kg or so, only a youngster, yet she was the paradigm of her breed. You can talk about your leaping queenfish, your gill-rattlin’ barramundi, your tail-walkin’ marlin, and some of the harum scarum thugs of tropic seas, they’re all way down on the scale. Just check out one of these tackle-bustin’ mako babies when she feels the hook and begins to shift stations. After that twelve-second intro there’s just three motionless anglers sitting there with jaws dropped upon chests.  Caveat Angler!!

It was a privilege bar none to watch this little fish, and a fortunate one to do so from an almost-safe distance. Had she landed in Salt Shaker, the little girl would have been reduced to matchwood and kindling in less time than it’d have taken us to vacate. So that was our first view of a mako in action, short as it was. Best to watch, and not to touch.

ISURUS OXYRINCHUS, the Short Fin mako, sometimes called Blue Pointer.

“Like a space age projectile from pointed nose to powerful upright balanced tail...the Mako has more deadly beauty and fighting spirit than any other shark...(Peter Goadby).

It is the fastest shark, and one of the fastest of fishes.  “For the Mako to jump clear of the water it must have a starting velocity of at least 35 kms per hour.”     (Sharks - An Illustrated Encyclopedic Survey).

“They have caused more damage to boats and fishermen than any other species and some of their jumps have been reliably reported at between 20 and 30 feet above the surface.  There have been occasions when, after breaking free, makos have returned and attacked the boat from which they were being fought  …...... BLUE DYNAMITE.

Whether they jump, run, circle or decide to attack the boat it is the element of uncertainty with these sharks that makes them such a challenge. 

 Truly, the only safe mako is a dead one, and one can never be quite sure just when they are really dead.”        (Peter Goadby in Big Fish And Blue Water).

The size of the boat has little to do with the mako’s decision to attack it. He may run in and ram the hull, or he may puncture the side with his teeth.  He may grab the rudder, the leg, or any other part and chew and shake savagely. Or he may come easily on the line and just lay quietly beside the boat daring you to strike with the gaff. I doubt that he would intentionally enter the boat, however a mako has ended a frightening leap inside boats on occasions and turned them into a shambles while awed anglers crouched at the furtherest corners or jumped out.

It is 9th October 1985  We already have a 49kg whaler laid down over the keel, with tackle and gear stacked around her. A pike-eel and a good jewie share the esky, and we’re expecting the jewfish to come on a good bite shortly.

Tom Hilpert, 15 years, 5’-4” and built like a biro, and John are my fellow jewfishers. Tom is having a grouch. He doesn’t have a black belt in macramé. For the past thirty minutes he’s been working on a huge birds nest in his lap. I had warned him against tying off the free line with two turns around his big toe while 25 yds of line, more or less, hangs pregnant with baited hooks close under the dinghy. It may have been premonition.

At any rate Tom yells “HEY!”  And looks up with startled alarm from the magnificent puzzle of loops and knots to see his left leg take an unprecedented leap and go over the gun’l in one unsightly dive. In a few moments his face begins to achieve the same fierce shade of purple that his fast strangling toe is taking, now almost awash beside the boat. Tom begins to take on the form of a startled pretzel, arms, legs and torso twisted everywhere. I make a dive with a knife to free his fast choking member but Tom cheats me from gaining his mothers’ undying gratitude by wrestling a bit of slack in the straining mono and freeing the digit himself.

We never get to see it gradually shade back through the spectrum, purple, blue, green, pink, then cacky white because KEEEERASH WHOOSHKA KEERRUMP! Out comes this little shark of around 25 kg or so barely two spits and a handshake away from the bow, starb’d quarter. It somersaults along 3 ft clear of the surface and a blast of water the size of a boat fans up where a new hole is detonated about 5 yds further around. It was a shift that would have shamed the leap of a starving leopard.

Wait for it -- yep! Five seconds later the water explodes hardly a boat’s length in front of the bow and out she comes in a similar but higher leap as to the manner born. She tumbles end over end once, jack-knifing left and right too fast to focus on. The spectacle is one of ferocious savagery and destruction, hell-bent on freedom, quite berserk, around the twist. If the first leap was a straight-from-the-shoulder counter punch, the second was the climax to the Chaikowski Overture and then some. In terms of bait fishing this whole seven-second procedure could be reckoned a megabite, something like 8.8 on the Open Ended Richter Scale.

At any rate it didn’t take her long after that to be gone. The boat swung momentarily, and we were left with some wire trace wrapped around the anchor rode 9 yards from the cleat. Too blinkin’ close for comfort!  “Baby Mako stronger than 10 Phantoms,” - old Jungle saying.

It looked like she’d got the hook well back inside the subway entrance with the spiked gates because the 130 lb braided 3x7 strand wire had been sawn off about 10 inches from the hook.

Tom shook the water from his head, kneaded his toe, and retrieved his bird’s nest. It had been the loose size if a laundry basket. That quick dip in the briny had compressed it to the size of a grapefruit with a few tightly locked loops drooping out here and there. “Can’t win ‘em all, can ya’ Tom! Stick to jewies.”

That was Tom’s first brief view of a Mako, my second.

This fish is becoming quite interesting, so what are some of the known facts about it, the nitty gritty ones?

Here is a brief profile, sketched from data available from the Authors of well researched source books –

‘SHARKS AND RAYS OF AUSTRALIA’ by Last and Stevens, (CSIRO Australia)

‘SHARKS’ an illustrated encyclopedic survey by international experts, (Golden Press Pty.Ltd.)

‘SHARKS Silent hunters of the deep’ – Readers Digest, with contributions from Perry Gilbert, Peter Goadby, Julian Pepperell, Susan Turner, Scott Johnson, Noel Kemp, Nick Otway, and Ron and Valerie Taylor. (Reader’s Digest Services P/L)

The mako is a Mackerel Shark which family includes the Great White & the Porbeagle. They are highly specialised for a pelagic existence. They have near a perfect hydrodynamic shape. The tail has a high ratio of height to length that produces maximum thrust with minimum of drag, (think of the marlins and the tunas). Mackerel sharks swim with a particularly rigid action.

Their body temperature is between 5 and 11 degrees C above the ambient water temperature and this allows the muscles to operate more efficiently. Heat generated in the muscles warms the colder blood coming from the gills. They maintain a high cruising speed and have many adaptations that are evidenced by the tunas. They have large gill areas -- the mako’s gill slits are quite long. The mako has a relatively large heart for a shark (0.2% of it’s body weight), and it may beat for a considerable time after all other life in the body has ceased.

The mako ranges with a worldwide distribution in the deep offshore waters. It shares with two other pelagic sharks, the blue and the white, the fastest absolute growth rate in sharkdom, about 30 cm (one foot) per year.

They practice a form of intra-uterine cannibalism. The she-shark’s ovaries produce many thousands of tiny eggs. The first few to hatch survive by eating successive batches of eggs that she continues to ovulate. These few embryos develop enormously extended stomachs full of yolks during their intermediate growth.

The teeth of the young mako are double-edged, long, narrow and curved, and very suited to grasping and holding their predominant food, fish and squid. When the mako grows large, 150 to over 650 kilos, the teeth become broader and more blade-like, apropos to cutting up such prey as swordfish, marlins, dolphins and porpoises.

The snout is quite pointed, as sharp as a newly minted pick. The large eye, set well forward in the head appears as a pitiless, bottomless, impenetrable black orb, colder than ice. Near the other end he bears widely flaring caudal keels demarked by neatly pronounced caudal grooves over and under. The width of the keels is quite spectacular. They carry their weight well forward in the body.

“...Their lethal graceful form, their spare economy of line and motion in the water; their smooth sleek and overwhelmingly ancient efficiency... (Richard Ellis, the artist, the great painter of sharks in their element.)

It is the 3rd of September 1989. 40 yards to the west of us that renowned 18 footer, ‘Wild Thing’, rocks gently to the anchor while Flo hauls back on her hand line. Naturally I expect it to come unstuck any tick of the clock. After all, anyone who puts big stretch in strong string and announces “Shark” while using mono to the hook is likely to have a short pull. Not wrong. After a few moments of this she lurches to regain balance, and is left with 70 fathoms of empty line in hand.  “Noah!”  Barry confirms with a shout.

We are picked in over a spot at the Busu where we’d located a non-stop jewie bite at 5:15 pm. the previous afternoon. You know the kind, the fish swim up to the baits right away and “I’ll have this thanks”-- YANK, - and they’re on. Doesn’t happen that often, but lotsa’ fun when it does. Jewies and small hammerhead sharks had climbed all over our baits as fast as we could get them to the bottom until we were forced to pull the pick and motor home before dark. Don’t you just hate doing that? Having to walk away from a major bite?

Well, not so today. A few red-tailed scad things and an emperor between our two boats was not much plunder for an hour’s work. Time passes and we drift and pull with the rope, exploring nearby depths. In the end we pull back above the same small shelf at the bottom.  A rule of thumb, “Reds on the top edge and jewies along the bottom, we’ll stay with the knitting for a while,” I suggest to Elaine, my fisher wife. “We might pick up another red.”

Ah well --- seeing as Mallett over there in Wild Thing is not doing anything to get his wife’s hook back for her from that shark today, we might as well do it for him. Lazy old man! I bring up my rig, clip on fresh bait, and rummage around in a neglected corner of a tackle box. 

“Wonder if a cyalume stick might help?”  So we break out a Mini Starlite, tie it on, snap it, chuck trouble over the side, and sit down to await developments.

In less than a minute of lead touching down I detect the gentlest of pulls, or think I have. Wait for the bite. None. Then came another of the slightest pulls, a touch as gentle as a mermaid selecting a pearl. I wonder if a ray has ghosted up and settled on it so I hit the straps. It all comes up fairly tight.

 “Ha! Gotcha fella!”   A fish with fair weight goes for a short run, and then allows me to bring it around and to begin lifting. No more antics. Five fathoms up and still coming smoothly. “A tame one. Might be a 20 kilo whaler by the feel of her, and a World’s First sleepy one at that,” I reply to Elaine’s query.

10 fathoms up and still no contest. Soon 60 up with about 5 to go and “Woops!” - she gives a headshake or two, which effect indicates a much greater weight than 20 kg. It’s not a whaler; not a ray; not a big cod; and certainly not a hammerhead. Might have been a happily inebriated tiger, if ever there was such a beast. The tiger shark, hooked deep in the belly, may let you lead him up a ways to begin with. One worry is for sure, we’re going to have one fresh green shark at the boat if she doesn’t start working hard soon. Steadily she comes, foot-by-foot, as smooth as pulling a spoon across buttered silk. Then one powerful jerk, a hint of annoyance, but no more. She’s stronger than she’s letting on. We’re going to have to be very careful with this one.

The wire leader comes to hand. I know better than to even think of the flying gaff yet. We’ll bring her through the tawny river current to see what this critter is for starters. This she would not allow. The only concession she makes is to flutter her tail out for a fleeting instant before sliding quietly in under the hull amidships. Instead of thumping it with a resounding thud and racing off down 50 or 60 yards as a whaler would, she seems to rest, unmoving.  Right there, her back just 6 inches under our feet -- BLUE DYNAMITE was the very furtherest thing from our minds.  Perhaps it should have been sus. At any rate I begin to ease her out with a firm careful pull.

That detonated the shortest fuse ever devised by Nature.  It did not even register in my mind that mono was sizzling through my fingers. There is a --WHOOSHKA-- of breaking water and 7 ft plus of amazing aqua-blue and dazzling white torpedo with fins rockets up just three yards in front of the bow. Cascading water, she arcs majestically eight foot up and over the anchor rope left to right - a thunderbolt hurled from the depths by King Neptune himself. She smashes down sideways with a reverberating explosion of noise quite unmatched by the shouts from the other boat -- “MAKO MAKO! LESTER’S GOT A MAKO!”

That was the first of five leaps, and far from the highest. My mind is racing, but not as fast as that shark. She has already spun around, shot through under us again like a Chimbu PMV going down hill as evidenced by the direction of the whipping mono while loops leap from the deck and rattle over the gun’l like a machine gun on full squeeze. My Oh my, this creature has the shortest temper this side of Henry the Eighth! It is well nigh impossible to adequately describe the power and grace of a shark in natural motion - swimming at peace or fighting for life – when all you have to work with is a series of symbols arranged on a sheet of paper.

Moments later she rockets straight up 16 feet or more into the blue sky 30 yards to the sou’west, and about the same distance from ‘Wild Thing’.  She hits the water like a loose propeller going through a feather mattress and we both instinctively duck. Froth keeps spewing up to the surface like whipped cream where she has plunged back with an ominously violent smack.

There’s no telling where the next eruption might occur -- it’s Russian Roulette and the plaything ain’t no mere loaded Thirty Eight with a hair trigger. This fish is deadly serious, and so is Elaine’s face. She begins screaming, “CUT IT OFF -- CUT IT OFF -- OH FOR GOODNESS SAKE CUT IT OFF!” She may have yelled “you idiot” too, I don’t recall. The dinghy is slewing around due to the half-wrap of mono around the anchor rode near the bollard. To make matters worse, as if I didn’t have enough problems on hand already, Barry on ‘Wild Thing’ waves both arms urgently and starts yelling “GET IF AWAY FROM HERE!” Oh yes, easier yelled than done; don’t bother me with side issues just now Pal!  You move!

By now my blood is fizzing and the vital question struggles to take form. Do I try to capture my first mako from this itty boat, or what? You see ‘Salt Shaker’ is the 12 ft plunderer of ocean fare that I had built of 6mm marine plywood and 2x1s in ’83. When the three of us are on board, (Elaine, I and the Yamaha 15) we have about 10” of freeboard. Surfboarders ride lesser craft that this and face tougher manoeuvres than we ever did. But a mako is a mako. All of us can appreciate that by now.

For one stretched out minute nothing further happens except that the fish races back and forth a short ways off, just under the surface, a ticking time bomb. We take advantage of the lull of fireworks and quickly unhitch the rope, pass this and the rope-tub around the line, and get unwrapped from that complication.

This achieved, the shark is given complete freedom with the line in the hope that she will put a little distance between us. This she does with a sizzling sprint straight out in a direction towards Singaua. In the next 20 seconds she thrills us with three more cart-wheeling leaps, punctuating the water with froth & noise every 20 yards or so, the last about 120 out.

Suddenly a couple loops snag up and 40 yds of mono more or less, lift off the deck in one blurred heap and swish overboard in swift pursuit of the prime mover.  Brutha - comparing Mako hooking with any other form of fishing is like comparing pickled onions with Tuesday!

Shortly after this she slows down, stops and lays doggo just under the surface, then moves off slowly. Sometimes she cruises east, then west, pulling steadily along with her big engine just ticking over. Elaine is hardly mollified when I mention that we will keep the fish out on a long line for a while to see whether we could wear it out there. During this she has been bringing the anchor up in record time, if only in the hope that I might be persuaded to escape this primitively savage and totally chauvinistic “Sport”.

The regulation outfit - a flexible rod and the reel which keeps the line neatly packed away from your thumbs and toes, which offers automatic safe release of line by drag-washers every time the fish gallops is the easy way to fight such fish. It puts the fight more on the terms of the angler than does hand lining them.

Hands and fingers controlling a free racing line doing 20 or 30 unstoppable knots do not afford quite the same automatic and instant safety release that a good mechanical drag system does.

Furthermore, when the fish is large and fast, such as wahoo, marlin, sail, mako, and some other sharks for that matter, one can keep very little tension, if any, on the line when the fish sprints. He sprints free and easy against a hand line, but he works hard for every yard that he strips from a reel with pre-set drag. That running against a set drag dramatically increases the rate of energy-sapping that a long run takes from a tough fish.  It’s like the human runner sprinting over deep soft sand. Slows him down and saps the reserve.

* 1 - (Refer Postscripts)

When you are dealing with fast powerful fish from confined spaces, and using hundreds of yards of line in the punch-up there’s the problem of controlling what you have in hand, and on the deck. No way can you afford a whipping half hitch to grab a finger, hand or foot. When the fish is on a fast sprint, or sounding to the ocean bed, seemingly to the core of the planet for that matter, loops can spring high enough to catch a persons’ head before running through the fingers. They leap like cut snakes gone mad, slapping you under the wrists and chin. Skills with hand lines can be mastered, however caution must prevail.

To push the limits of digression a little further … remember, at this point of proceedings our mako is cruising back and forth east and west for a couple of minutes, so we can stop and consider options … here are other thoughts.

Fishing dangerous fish with rod and reel is like boar hunting with bow and lance from horseback.

Doing so with a hand line is like doing it with lasso and dirk on foot, believe me.  At least that’s the gut-feeling while aboard a twelve-foot platform.  I think the fish has a more even chance when jousting on a hand line. Has that got anything to do with the IGFA credo?

Sensibilities must be observed, risks commensurate with your experience must be weighed and accepted before you decide to continue challenging that big fish at the other end of your common bond, that heavy-tackle hand line. I was using 45 kg main line with a 37 kg leader to the wire, the 37 allows you ‘some’ chance to break off in case of dire event.

Peter Pakula once wrote – “If you stop to think about it, the fish you want most, the biggest ones, are the fish you get the least amount of practice with, simply because they don’t come in the same numbers as smaller fish. Catching big fish in small boats with a small crew is as good as it gets. It’s also as dangerous as it gets.”

** 2- Refer Postscripts

But I digress, awfully. This mako has already staged enough surprises for one morning. Trying to gaff and tail-rope this baby from our dinghy could be every bit as dangerous as carrying a cash-bag around Taraka after dark. ‘Chasing the cat is more fun than catching it.’ Noting the grimace of my precious Better Half, I cast about for another method. The solution seems to lie in doing so from the beach. The swell is slight this afternoon and we ought to be able to run up onto the gravel and sand safely enough between the wash of breakers.

First we move east to coax our fish well away from ‘Wild Thing’ before putting on the screws. Having accomplished this we throttle up a little and move cautiously but steadily with the line under good tension, paying it out when necessary, one hand on the tiller, the other on the line. I don’t want to jolt the Nitro until we have beach underfoot and a sand dune to retreat behind.

It’s a bit tricky holding the fish while beaching the boat between waves and getting it dragged up a little. 3 or 4 gallons of water over the stern guarantee another handheld radio sale by Huon Marine, but apart from that we did well enough.

Rarely had that mako gone more than a meter or two under water. The line was always stretched well out over the surface. I ran along the beach away from the boat and began hauling hard, jerking and laying line on the beach, attempting to make her jump to burn up energy, but she would not leap. Smart? Or weary?

Eventually, an hour after that first javelin-like leap she angles around towards the beach and comes smoothly right on in. The moment she arrives into the shallows and feels the sand on her belly she bolts straight ahead and runs herself half-ways out of the water, hammering on the beach and belting buckets of sand and water left and right and centre with that big broad propeller.

I pull hard and together with her thrashing, she comes clear of the water. A passing man from Tikeling Village along the coast grows interested enough to join the brawl. Though she is lunging and snapping dangerously, our newfound assistant gamely skips forward and sets my fly-gaff between her teeth. I say gamely because this little gaff is no more than a 12/0 tuna hook on a short wire and light rope rubber-banded to a fifteen-inch piece of 3/4” dowel. With this in place we hauled her up the beach a little further & administered the “sleeper.”

Having laid her safely down over the keel of Salt Shaker with iher head under the for’d thwart we re-packed our gear, launched and motored back out to Wild Thing to discuss events and to fire off a few more photos.

Upon opening her up back home some two hours after taking the head half off at the beach (how else could I launch and coax Elaine back into the boat with that ‘beast’ aboard?) we discovered two interesting details, to wit –

1)- The heart was still beating vigorously. It continued to beat a timed 80 convulsions to the minute for some time after it was cut out and set on the table. Incredible!  Does that say something about the vitality of the mako as a game fish? Try that test on any other fish!

2)- We extracted Flo’s half-pound sinker from its’ gut, all scratched up and punched full of more holes than a weekly bus ticket. And her two 5/0s still loaded with bait. “There y’ gooo Flo!”

“.…and if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.”  (Izaak Walton in The Compleat Angler)

Postscripts

*1- To underline this observation I have on record a wonderfully memorable trip whereupon Elaine and I accompanied Richard Bull and his ‘boat-man’ Jacob on an extended ‘Escape’ trip along the Vitiaz Straits as far as Sio in the search of Lae’s first billfish grander. We toured back home via the Siassis. Along the way we put in a few nights with baits under the boat. A grander with tiger-stripes would not miss the plot by far either.

As we know, Richard was a well-built, solid, physically-tuned young man in those days of the late ‘90’s (I write for benefit of readers of the far future), and all of the club and national game fishing records he set as a Junior do attest that by attaining manhood his ‘rodsmanship’ was of the highest order.

One balmy tropical night, anchored up in front of a river near Sio Richard hooked and brought two handy silvertip whalers to the gaff, each on 24 kg stand-up tackle. The first was beaten and at the boat inside 14 minutes, weighed 84 kg on scales ashore next morning. Beaten? But took 3 fly gaffs and a tail rope before it gave up the struggles. The second was hooked and brought to boat just on 12 hard-fought minutes, however some 15 minutes after a quiet gaffing had been completed the histrionics she put up would have been incredible to the uninitiated. This one weighed 94 kg. Yes, as a “Dog-Toother” of much experience, Richard can certainly extract the maximum damage with his tackle.

Several nights later, anchored at Mape River at Finsch, he hooked and brought two more whalers to the gaff, one sub 40 kg, the other was an estimated 80 kg, not weighed ashore. The larger took a little over 10 minutes to subdue the larger on same rod, 24 kg.

Two nights previously we had anchored over a 25 to 30-fathom deep hole in a shallower horseshoe reef south of West New Britain, east of the Dampier Straight for a night’s hand-line fishing. The weather and the forecast was magic. A lot of fishing fun was had. Then we moved to the side of the drop off and work began. Then around 9:30 pm Richard hooked up on a solid ‘puller’ on one of my 45 kg hand lines. Before too long the call came for me to get the anchor up and begin motoring. Elaine and I noted his fishing time. It ended moments before 11:30 pm when a tuckered out white-tip whaler (or silver-tip?) hung exhausted beside our hull, Richard estimated it a match for the two at Sio, around 90.

Now all sharks are individuals, however specie related comparisons generally conform to a vitality norm. Here we go now - three pelagic whalers of like size were hooked, fought and captured in similar time on the same rod by the same angler. In round figures, 24 kg tackle on the rod-and-reel system subdued each of these three pelagic whalers in approximately 20 minutes of a good angler’s time. Three is a fair yardstick?

Meanwhile the only notable difference in the circumstances for capture of the Dampier St. whaler was that it was fought with hand-line, a much heavier one, instead of the rod and reel. In all cases (we used break-away anchors or a retrieved anchor) the boat was motored during most of each capture.

Now Richard may not be as experienced in handling a hand line as he is with the rod and reel, however I didn’t see him do anything wrong. The simple fact was that every time the fish sped away there was very little drag he could apply. The only taxing times for the fish was when it swam slowly or was being brought around by the line. Despite all of the hard pulling the man did, the fish swam relatively freely when it tracked off at pace.

Photos with the above Trip when I get it written from the typed pages to the computer and dressed with some scenery.

**2- I certainly do not advocate 30kg+ sharks on hand lines for the inexperienced, particularly due to the inherent dangers of loose line around one’s feet. We’ve succeeded in this boat with ten whalers between 93 and 168 kg and a thumping 96 kg ray with a stinger like a spar, and numerous other sharks including a few tigers ranging down in the sub-80 kg figures. It’s the 30 to 60 kg whalers of most species that we have captured or lost that are far the most active, fast and difficult at boat-side. This is possibly because A)- being smaller they are brought to boat faster and fresher than larger ones, and B)- they are probably at the peak of their vim and vigour. We had one minor incident and a couple dicey surprises while learning. Personal safety and captures lie in taking time, and in not having too many surprises sprung on you.

Lester Rohrlach

First published in the Lae Yacht Club Magazine 'The Mast Head'

© Copyright 2001-2004 Lae Game Fishing Club and Lester Rohrlach. All Rights Reserved.