Friday, 18 January 2013

Tiger Shark Fishing

Source (google.com.pk)
Tiger Shark Fishing Biography

December 2nd, 2009 Unlike last years Brisbane River Classic, this years had shifted to an individual entry. As such there was no more of “The Bent Hookers” to be written on any trophy. As I was somewhat busy with numerous Christmas parties, my budding half, Ben Coley entered in with the goal of retaining our grasp on the Golden Hook for the largest shark.

Needless to say, Ben dragged me away from the free alcohol and we headed on down to Luggage Point, informally known as the “poop shoot” for an early morning shark fish. The aim was the 3am low tide, but what transpired was an action packed night which never saw 3am come.
We arrived around 11:30pm-12am Friday night/Saturday morning and got to work pretty quickly. Ben sorted out the defrosting bait, while I set about digging the rod holder into a firm footing. Just thought I’d give it a quick test by leaning back and pulling against it
After that it was a quick sharpen of some already sharp hooks
Before long I was rowing the baits out a good 2-300m, using MOJO (my kayaks name) for it’s first real shark bait deployment duties. The rig for tonight’s affair was an Okuma T50W freshly loaded with 60lbs mono, and a single eel rigged on two 16/0 J style hooks connected on a lengthy cable ideal for the larger sharks.

The mood was pretty confident, and we had our hopes up for a fun night fishing. Maybe that was just my alcohol, but regardless I was enjoying the night so far.
Once bait was deployed I headed back in and began to relax in the comfort of the ute, listening to some pumping dance tracks to fire us up. Well, relax isn’t exactly what occurred, as we managed our way through about 1/3 a bag of chips, and at most 2.5 songs before we heard a short sharp zzzzzzzzZZZZzzzzz of the drag. Comments like “Are you serious?” “What the..??” were made as our eyes stared at the rod tip to observe even the slightest movement of line. I pointed out the slackening of line and we slowly reeled in the slack line, not wanting to place any great pressure on the line until we were ready to drill those hooks in.
The shark took another small, slow run before the rod slowly loaded again, drag was cranked up and we headed for the hills with the rods. Fortunately we were blessed with solid weight at the end and we were ON!

Ben quickly geared up and threw on the harness before laying the hurt on this shark, which at felt first rather small.

Well that only lasted so long, any once we’d regained enough line for the shark to be near that well documented drop off (anyone remember our last BRC ‘07 report?) this shark must have realised it was moving into an area it didn’t want to be in.

This is when it started to give Ben a little more grief, but before too long it succumb to the fearsome power of one Ben Coley! Then came that drop off. Ben stopped regaining line and I knew what the problem was. The shark was moving no where. So I jumped aboard my Hobie Revolution nicknamed MOJO, and followed the line out towards the drop off. Once I got near it, I lifted the line up and felt it instantly snap to the left, this happened twice before the line was again moving a little more freely. I yelled out to be to loosen the drag a little as there was a little roughage from submerged objects. Unfortunately this only lasted so long and the shark was again moving nowhere. So I returned to the water and this time followed out the line again. “Woh! I’ve got the double!” I yelled out. Here I am, in my 13 something foot kayak at what felt like 1am now with my doubled section of line in my hand, and an unknown shark only 9 metres away. I followed it further and reached the trace. “I’ve got the trace!!!” So here I am, out in a kayak, holding onto the wire that connects us to this shark. I give it a little lift and a reel good reef back to either wake the shark up or free it of whatever it is caught on. Suddenly the shark bolts and I release the trace as I start to get towed.
Well that was it for our trouble with the drop off and I quickly return to shore before jumping out and running out to grab the trace. It was around this stage when we visually saw the shark that we realised it was much larger than what we were expecting. Our hopes were for a 6ft shark on the bait we were using, and given the fight we thought that was on the money.

We got it in, took a few happy snaps with the BRC 2008 Unique Item for the newly appointed Photograph and Release guidelines for sharks, before pushing this beauty back into the deeper waters.
This beauty went 236cm to the fork, 280cm to the tip of the tail. Only falling short by about 10cm of my efforts last year. NOT BAD FOR THE RIVER!!

Well done Ben Coley! Great shark, and a great win for The Bent Hookers in BRC 2008! A good way to loosen the systems and remember what Sharks are and how to use some of our gear before some bigger trips later this summer.

Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing
Tiger Shark Fishing

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