Shark attacks and the media

[Gadfly]

From expereince, there are almost always sharks in the surf zone.  I have seen them while flying over it, fishing in it and diving through it.

The surfzone is the Mcdonalds of the ocean.  It is more a factor of numbers of people in the water plus a (small) rebound of the shark population since limits where introduced, rather than any unusual activity.

Sharks don't scare me nearly as much as barracuda, stingrays and bluefish, anyway.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Gadfly:
It is more a factor of numbers of people in the water plus a (small) rebound of the shark population since limits where introduced, rather than any unusual activity.

Yep, its both, more people in the water (what do you know media focused on that part!) AND more fishing restrictions.(the part they DON'T focus on in the news)

What the heck are bluefish?

[Eagler]

Originally posted by Ripsnort:


What the heck are bluefish?

http://www.fishsarasota.com/fish_species/bluefish.html

Great fun on light tackle. Need a steel leader though as they have some choppers. Travel in large schools chasing bait and will hit anything that flashes in the water including milk colored tourists  

   

[Ripsnort]

ahh, I could see how they would mistake Rosie O'Donnell in the sea for 'food'....I can hear her now..."We must remove the teeth from fish! They are killing our children!"

[oki]

umm  ,  there's a restriction?  ooops  , guess we better put the powerheads away.

[Gadfly]

I have seen a school of bluefish run through an acre or so of mullet, leaving nothing but a bloody oil slick in a matter of a few minutes.  

Here is my favorite shark story:  We had a charter for kingfish(slimefish, I hate em), and it was a little slow, so we were backing up to shrimp boats and drifting icefish off of them.

The water was only about 50' deep, and if your bait got within a few feet of the bottom, small(18"-36") shovelnose sharks would take it every time.  Since I was the mate, I had the pleasure of dicking with them and saving the tackle.  This one salamander thought it was funny to watch me remove them from his hook, and kept letting it settle to the bottom.

Finally, a little bitty one flipped out of my hand into the cockpit, and began thrashing around.  The smarter of us hauled bellybutton for the flybridge or the cabin, but the salamander just stood there laughing.

The little shark clamped onto his calf, and would not let go, and now the salamander began thrashing!  After I quit laughing, I squeezed his head(the shark's) and threw him over board.  The salamander had a nice round chunk of meat taken out of his leg, and his (drunk) buddies would not let us return to port for another 4 hours. Needless to say, he was a bit nicer after that, as I patched him up.

Another time, when I was a kid, I caught a perfectly formed hammerhead that was only about 8 inches long.  I put him in the ice chest, and many hours later, when we got back to the dock, I revived him, and he swam away.  Amazing critters they are.

p.s.  The biggest shark I have SEEN is a 25 foot plus hammerhead off of Okracoke about 30 miles.  I know he was that big because he swam down alongside the boat, which was a 25 footer, and he was longer than it was.

The biggest I have CAUGHT(not me personally, but the boat I was on) is a tiger off the mouth of the Mississippi river that would have went easy 600#s, but we cut him off at the boat.  That one hit a Marlin lure being trolled at 18 knots, and he launched about 10 foot into the air and ate the bait on the his way down.  Pretty cool, man, let me tell you.

[Professor Fate]

I work at the SE Regional Fisheries Training Center in Charlseton SC, our XO wrote something that explains why sharks bite people.

"When people enter the water they become part of the food chain"

[mietla]

Originally posted by Gadfly:
I have seen a school of bluefish run through an acre or so of mullet, leaving nothing but a bloody oil slick in a matter of a few minutes.  

Are they like the piranha which will eat anything regardles of its size?

Would they attack a human?

[Superfly]

10Bears, it's called propaganda and ratings.  
Remember, the news media is a money making machine just like everything else in this world.  The more the news scares people and keeps them hanging on to some BS drama, the more their ratings go up and the more they make money.
Just look at the all the crap with Elian; Cuba's Poster Boy/Answer to Christ.     Have you seen all the crazy religious achetype paintings that have been made of that kid?  It's insane the way people get caught up in the dumbest things the media makes a big deal out of.  (Yes, I've been guilty of it too, but starting to wise up a bit.   )

[mrfish]

yikes - i found a headless seal out at ocean beach a few months back - how timely - the rest of him had big ol nast cuts and punctures. no propellor there.

every time i go to the bay or the ocean i see seals swimming around so you can bet i'm not going in there with em.  

[mrfish]

Originally posted by SUPERFLY:
Remember, the news media is a money making machine just like everything else in this world.  The more the news scares people and keeps them hanging on to some BS drama, the more their ratings go up and the more they make money.
Just look at the all the crap with Elian; Cuba's Poster Boy/Answer to Christ.     Have you seen all the crazy religious achetype paintings that have been made of that kid?  It's insane the way people get caught up in the dumbest things the media makes a big deal out of.  (Yes, I've been guilty of it too, but starting to wise up a bit.   )

oh yeah - and double cc that.

[Ripsnort]

(Yes, I've been guilty of it too, but starting to wise up a bit.  

The further you get away from college (in years, after the political brainwashing), and the older you get, the wiser you get.  

[-ammo-]

Bluefish are incredible to catch. Fishing at Emerald Isle this past spring 3 of us managed to LAND 140+ of them. MNietla, no danger really to humans, but if you are a baitfish..these things just mow through a school. However be carefull how you handle a hooked one. No lipping You know when the school is close, rod tips and gotcha plugs start slinging and bending.

Gadfly- while fishing in south Fla in Biscayne bay, my friend and I had a HUGE great hammerhead visit us. Our bout was 14 foot and the shark was that then a little more. I though I saw a king size hammerhead..but 25 ft, Oh My. His head was better than 30" wide from eye to eye. We felt very...insignificant.. in our little john boat and 3 miles from black creek landing.

One of our favorite thing=s to do in South Fla was catch Barracuda. We would just trll with light tackle in Biscayne bay with pre-rigged ballywho (spl?) and we hung some really big cuda.

[Gadfly]

Bluefish are like piranha when excited, but they will weigh 5-15 pounds instead of 8 ounces like a piranha.  I would not want to fall overboard in their frenzy...


Yeah Ammo, Cuda are fun, but mean.  It is a waste of good Ballyhoo trying to catch em, just wrap some tinfoil around a number 6 hook.

I was wrong in the post above, I have actually seen bigger sharks than that, though not much.  I have seen 3 or 4 whale sharks in the Gulf, mostly over the Flower Gardens off Texas.  They were 15-35 feet, but a lot more massive.  If you see one and turn the motors off, they will come up and rub on the boat.  Hey, even a shark likes a good backscratch.

Anchored up(to a can, not the bottom) on the Flower Gardens, I have had one come by as I fished in the middle of the night.  I would leave the tower lights on and have a 100 foot cone of light.  The flying fish would volunteer into the cockpit, so I always had bait.  Anyway, one night, a whaleshark came up behind the boat and just hung there for a while, maybe 5 feet away, and 4 feet under the surface.

I was tempted to get in the water with him, but the massive, fleeting shadows at the edge of the cone were decidedly NOT whalesharks, so I just watched him, as he did me.  He had a whole posse of pilot fish and even triple tails following him, it was sweet.

[mietla]

Originally posted by Gadfly:

Yeah Ammo, Cuda are fun, but mean.  It is a waste of good Ballyhoo trying to catch em, just wrap some tinfoil around a number 6 hook..

You mean you can get Ammo and Cuda on a number 6 hook baited with a tin foil?

So far I tried only shooting at them, gotta try the hook method