15/11/2012 Conditions were eventually just right to get a chance to catch those powerful and amazing Blue sharks. Over the past few years here in Co Kerry weather conditions have made it unachievable to get out for some shark fishing. After seeing the forecast we knew we had a small window of opportunity to try some shark fishing.
The excitement of shark fishing is something only those lucky enough to have caught shark would have experienced. The next job was locating the shark gear which hadn’t seen daylight for some time. The trace I use for shark fishing is 3 ft of 150lb steel line, to this I use a 10/0 hook on one end of the trace and a 2/0 swivel on the other end. You must be sure to crimp your trace perfectly and I always double crimp just to be on the safe side. To the steel line I also attach 12ft of 200lb mono, this is a must as sharks tend to twist and wrap themselves in your line, when their in and around the boat. Make sure you test your trace by putting as much pressure on it as you can. Lots of good fish and sharks are lost due to dodgy gear.
Scent is what draws sharks to the boat, and you must have plenty of rubby dubby. Any type of blood will drive sharks wild but no human blood lads! It’s not a very pleasant job, making rubby dubby but this is very important. Fish oil, fish, bran and blood along with all your old dodgy bait mixed to a near pulp will do the job and the more the merrier.
With all the hard work done it was time to head out and see would the angling God’s be good to us. Leaving the Pier at 5am in the morning we knew we had a good 2 hour journey ahead of us to the shark grounds. Our skipper for the day was the experienced John Deady, a skipper who’s landed hundreds of shark over the years. Our crew on the day consisted of Bryan O Keeffe the owner of the Westend bar, Eugene Farrelly, (Ullcatch) Frank Mcyntyre, Mike Ryle and myself. With 2 hours of a journey ahead of us, it gave us plenty of time to have our gear in top shape. On the way out to Brandon we spotted a big mass on the fish finder, so in went the feathers and jigs. Herring were all over the place, good enough bait but not as good as mackerel. Only after 10 minutes of jigging we had over 100 herring which would be handy later on. Without mackerel we were wasting our time so we moved on a couple of more miles to try for mackerel. Bingo! Mackerel along with more herring, it didn’t take long to catch our bait for the day with another large catch of herring along with half a box of mackerel we were on the ball. Sharks here we come and a half hour later we were on the fishing grounds.
First job to be done at our destination was getting our scent trail started. Whiten minutes there was a nice oily slick on the water surface. The water depth was 200 ft. and it was time to get the balloons out, which are used as floats to keep the bait suspended in the water. We were fishing full mackerel as our bait, a mixture of mackerel flappers and plain whole mackerel baits. Those who don’t know what a flapper is, it’s when you cut out the back bone and tail of the fish, doing this gives a flapping motion in the water, and also a lot more scent. The herring we had caught earlier was also being cut into pieces and put into the water, a little appetiser to get the sharks taste buds going. Different coloured balloons were being used by us, so there would be no confusion when a Shark took the bait. The baits were being fished at depths from 15ft to 25ft and distances from 30 to 100 yards. There have been lots of stories about the one that got away, not only the fish, rod and reel too. So make sure your drag is set on your reel.
…..Read Ullcatch full article on ‘Blue skies and Blue Sharks’
Compliments of:
Ullcatch
Martin McGowan 087 3152516 or Eugene Farrelly 0864044671
Email: [email protected]
Web: http://www.facebook.com/www.ullcatch
