Hi all! Im from sunny South Africa. Been brousing around your forum. Nice.
I do some part time guiding, mostly for guys who target sharks from the beach or rocks. (stricktly catch and release)
Anybody there who catches sharks from the shore?
I also do a lot of deepsea fishing. Mostly target large gamefish eg Dorado( dolphin fish), Sailfish, Couta (not shure what you guys call them) and Marlin.
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Hi there carcharias and welcome to the BFT. Nice to have someone join us from your part of the world. You bet that we have members that target sharks. I believe that TubeN2 has chased characters in a tube & fly rod. He should be stopping by shortly.
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Hi Dryrod. Thanks for the welcome. Im sure that Im going to enjoy comparing techniques and tips with the sharky guys on BFT. Anybody that slides big baits for species sutch as the bullshark, Bronze whaler, Ragged tooth etc?
Welcome aboard carcharias and thanks for taking the time to register here.
I am one of a few Shark enthusiasts on this board. I do fish them from Shor
e, Boat and Float Tube.
Out on the Coast of California, we get some Great Whites, Thresher Sharks, Shortfin Mako Sharks, Swell Sharks, Spiny Dogfish, Leopard Sharks and Horn Sharks as our most popular game species.
I also enjoy fishing for the Grey Smoothhound, Brown Smoothhound and Reef Sharks.
We don't have any of the Bull Sharks out here on my end but I have had a chance to fish them in Florida and Louisiana waters. On the Florida coast we can go for Lemon Sharks, Rollers and Threshers too.
Not too long ago, I went to Hawaii to catch my first Tiger Shark.
I guess I share the passion of Shark fishing with many others and I do release the Sharks that I catch.[cool]
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Hi TubeN2
Are you guys allowed to land Great Whites?
We have to cut our lines as soon as we know its a White, or risk a R50 000.00 fine and loss of all equipment as well as possibly your vehicle.
We have to satisfy ourselves with bullsharks , the odd tiger as well as large ragged tooth sharks as our larger species.
If we travel to our southern regions, the bronze whaler shark is one that gets really large. Specimens of 200kg and more are quite common. Mako's also make an appearance in the southern waters.
One of my customers managed to land a Raggie of 185kg, off the beach, two months ago.
Do you perhaps use large slide baits? We find this the best way to target sharks of 100kg plus. We use multiplier reels loaded with braid and 200m of topshot . Heavy sinkers (8 to10oz) are used to hold the line tight so that the bait can be worked out deep, using a slider rig.
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We are allowed to get the White only close enough for a picture and the cut the line.
Sliding baits are the ticket out here too. Whole Mackerel or Bonita Fish since they are bleeders.
My standard rig for Mako's is 80lb braid with 230lb steel leader. I caught my pesonal record of 468lb with this.[cool]
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Great stuff! That Mako must have put up a nice fight. Even the smaller ones are line strippers of note.
I have found that makkies and bonnies are the best here too.
Live swim baits work really well. We also often slide the head of a dorado(dolphin fish). Bullsharks seem to like heads. We are also using steel traces followed by a windon leader of 8to10m. For the really big bulls I go as heavy as 300lb steel. I have found that windon leaders allow you to really whack the cast without fear of breaking the line on the initial windup.
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