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Subject:  Threshers...How, When, Where |
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Author: Jim Day |
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Date Posted: 1047422388PST I'm no expert but I know a few things. Two groups inshore and off. Inshore are pups to 200 LB.. and they are usually shallow around 35 to forty feet. Because of there size and the fact the stay shallow you can use fairly light gear. Outside the same sharks would sound you out of line. As one of my "real expert" buddies used to tell me. If you see birds working in 35 feet of water between The Getty and Point Dume there's a good chance that threshers are around. When the pups are thick they can go wide open like bones or yellows, not often heard but true. The guys from Malibu that really catch a ton of them say the best bait then is chunked Mack's or sardines flylined when they are on the chew. For slower bites in an area known to hold fish the guys slow troll dines. It's not brain surgery. Just troll a dine with a two to four ounce sinker rubber banded to the line well away from the bait at 1.5 to 2 knots. If you don't know where they are or are scope'n out a new area trolling Rapala's is hard to beat. You want to use the medium sized ones about four inches: in a sardine, blue Mack, or silver and black pattern. Put them well back or on a downrigger at 3.5 knots. The problem with Rapala's is you'll end up tail hooking a lot of sharks and they often drown. Tail hooking will kill sharks. It's not an issue when fishing chunks but trolling even with dines it's a problem. First you need to understand how these sharks feed. The come up and "slap" the bait with their tail to stun it then return to eat it. The slap is not side to side like a "B" slap but instead forward like a sword slash. Often with lures the hooks will stick in the leading edge of the tail due to it's own inertia. Other times they'll hang as the shark pulls away somewhere in the surface of the tail. If the drag is tight they'll bury, if not they may just stick then come loose. Almost nothing can be done in the first scenario. In a leading edge hookup the sharks own tail inertia hooks itself, but in the second there are a few tricks you can use to cut down on the amount of sharks that die on the line. One is run an extremely light drag just enough to keep line on the spool. When the shark first hits it won't hook up. Freespool the bait or lure back keeping it barely moving forward while you tighten your drag. If it comes back it should take it in it's mouth, that's when you set the hook. Guys do it with dines all the time, but though most don't know it, it also works with Rapala's. The other way is running heavy gear 60 LB. or eighty pound and just horsing the fish in as quick as possible to minimize stress and release it before it dies. There's some despute about this though. Dragging sharks backward kills them, they only get oxygen swimming foreward. Some believe that fighting them is better on light line because you follow the fish while it's still swimming foreward. Makes some sense to me! Gear wise you can take inshore T's on anything from six to 80 LB but most guys use 25 or thirty pound. You want a long leader at least double the breaking strength of your line. Some guys use wire some don't. Offshore Threshers are another can of worms. Adult fish from two hundred to five hundred pounds these fish are usually found outside working bait. I've known guys that have caught them off Malibu and I personally took one off Rocky Point, but most of these big fish are taken south: off Dana and Newport. Since your not fishing structure they are much harder to find, but when you do find them there is usually more then one around. These are big fish and they are strong, they fight much harder then a Mako of the same size. Use a minimum of 450 yards of fifty for these fish. (most guys use eighty pound plus). They sound as much as 1200 ft straight down so don't get short on line. What ever tackle you use you want plenty of line capacity. Did I say that enough?...LOL Most of these fish are trolled up on bait jig combo's. Baitamatics work great so do skirted baits fished on a downrigger at 60 to a hundred feet. With the lures or jigs you want a decent size mack pinned on at least a 9/0 or larger hook, razor sharp. You can also catch these on slow trolled live Mack's or even chunks if your right on top of them. The rules for tail hooking are the same. Loose drags will cut down on tail hookups and various rigs from rubber bands to clips are used with the live bait to allow the fish to stun the bait then come back for a mouth hookup. Exper-tease: I'm no expert. I've fished sharks all my life starting with Blacktips in the Texas surf at age 8 in 1968. That's 35 years of sharking experience. I've fished everything from 12/0 with 200lb test and 1/8 inch aircraft cable. To six pound with 27 LB single strand wire. I've caught Tigers, Hammerheads, Lemons, Bulls, Makos, Leopards, soupfins and Thresher sharks. That said I hardly ever fish threshers and have only actively targeted them three times. I've taken two: one around thirteen feet (say 350lbs plus) and another around seven (fifty pounds?) Lost a handful more. Like I said I don't spend much time chasing these sharks. That said: I'm a shark nut. I've talked to the guys who really fish them (Bob Levy) read the books and rigged up countless leaders etc. for them. I guess I like the idea of thresher fishing more then actually doing it. Of coarse I have my reasons... When I came out here I started fishing sharks right off. In the 90's I caught hundreds of Mako's so many in fact I got burned out on them. I chummed them, I trolled them, I even made my own lures to troll for them. One year my buddy Mike and I got over 150 Mako's on the troll. We released most but that's still got to be some kind of record. Personally I've not taken a shark in maybe five years. I've put friends on them and gaffed fish for others but not taken any myself. I used to target mako's before because they reproduce faster and there is just plain more of them, but in the mid 90's I saw a very noticeable drop in Mako numbers due to increased fishing pressure. The Mako's I was catching sometimes had mouth scars and hooks in them often from sportsman. Nothing worse then seeing a 6 ft mako with six feet of wire and ten feet of wind on leader dragging behind him. At the time I blamed Fred Archer, but there were a lot of people banging the "Go fish for mako's" drum!! I'm very happy to see the thresher comeback. Since I now fish a small skiff I may even target them some this year. It's important to note that these like all sharks are very susceptible to overfishing. They reproduce slower then almost all sharks. Mako's have multiple pups per litter T's have two. Some of the sharks in Santa Monica or so small they are only few weeks old. Fish for them in moderation and if you do get into them my advice is to keep quite. The last thing we need is hundreds of guys targeting these local pups because one guy is more into posting for his own ego and personal fame then the well being of this all too limited resource. Good luck with the T sharks. Drop me some mail and maybe we'll buddy boat when you go. Just remember when it comes to T sharks: fish , post, and take in moderation. This last season we saw a bunch of guys out there killing these babies because some guys wanted web and media attention and posted too much. Like I said this is a limited fishery and it would be good if it stayed that way. Tight lines, Jim [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |