Gink and Gasoline did a really interesting piece that came up in my email this AM about sharks.
If you’ve been out there, you’ve been around them. I haven’t had any calls as close as his, but I have had a couple of sphincter tightening incidents.
It is their home and we are taking dinner out of their mouths, so, a little caution goes a long way and a bit of education helps. Read the G&G piece.
Company.
As you may have gathered, we recently moved up to Alameda, an island city in the Bay Area. We are super close to a beach with a huge hard sand flat. I was wondering if anyone fished it at high tide with bait and when I saw an angler a couple weeks ago I decided to give it a go.
We fished a little bit from the beach last weekend and had a couple of nibbles, but no fish to hand.
Today, in-between storms we tried it again.
And… pay-dirt.
We managed five small leopard sharks from the beach, about 150 feet from the house. I’m kind of loving this place.
New Home Shark
And no… it was not swimming weather, but this girl knows no such thing as cold.
It got me thinking… I might be able to catch a shark just by wading out and blind casting with a fly rod. I may have to give that a try. We’ll see.
PS – I forgot to mention this. One of the leopards actually jumped. It jumped when it got near the beach and spit the hook like a tarpon. I’ve never seen that before. So. Much. Fun.
Maybe it is that my girl loves sharks, maybe it is that they are a fish and I love fish. Either way, I’ve found myself more and more interested in sharks. Sharks of all kinds. The local sharks we catch from the pier, the sharks I see on the flats and the sharks from far away I likely will never see, I am interested in them all. I think that is a growing part of what I like about fly fishing in the salt, seeing and sharing the water with shark.
My daughter turns, gulp, 8 here soon and we are having a shark themed birthday. I’ll be making a whale shark cake and shark fin cupcakes (not made with real shark fins). My girl has a decal of a whale shark in her room and shark teeth in abundance.
Sharks are an indicator of the health of the ecosystem. It is a sign that prey is nearby, and bonefish are prey. A flat devoid of sharks is often a flat you don’t want to be fishing.
Anyone else enjoy sharing the flats with the more toothy fish?
Company.
Over the weekend I took the girl for the first time to the Marine Science Institute in Redwood City for “Shark Day.” Kind of tailor made for my shark loving kid.
It was a nice little event, starring the beauty of the Bay, the Leopard Shark. We get to see and handle a fair number of these sharks out fishing from the pier, but it was nice to see them swimming around the tank and to see other kids get a chance to get up-close and personal with them.
Tag, you’re it.
All of the Leopards were tagged and will be released and it sounds like they are considering allowing other anglers to tag and release these fish as well. That would be fantastic for us and exactly what my girl has been longing to do. I hope that goes through.
All the kids got a chance to touch a leopard.
Jaws, of a sort.
I hope to get out here again for future events and maybe a trip out on their research vessel.
If we really do get recycled when we die and come back here again to do it all over again, my next life I want to be a fisheries biologist. I think about fish for large portions of each day, it would be great to be out there doing field research.
That won’t happen for me, but if you know some young kid who might want to do something like that, you should have them check out Bimini Sharklab. They take on interns and teach them the craft and they just do some pretty damn cool work as well. Really, check them out.
They have a great website and you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook as well.
I love sharks. Maybe I love them because my daughter loves them, but I think it is more than that.
Nurse Shark, snorkeling with El Pescador.
I love seeing sharks up on the flats because it means everything is working, the system is healthy and things are as they are supposed to be. Where you find sharks, you find bonefish. When you see a barracuda hanging around, it is likely a bonefish will pass that way before too long. The predators police the flats, picking off the injured, the sick and the less fit. They are the reason a bonefish swims 25 mph and tails in inches of water. They are what they are because of the predatory pressures exerted by those sharks and cudas.
So, we should all love sharks and forgive the odd shark or cuda that steals a fish off our line. They are the ones who made them, after all.
Company.
My girl doesn’t watch a lot of TV at our place. We just don’t have the time. One show we DVR and watch together is Shark Men, featuring the OCEARCH team as they catch, tag and track sharks. My girl loves sharks and I do too. We are fans of the show, of the work and of the support they get from Costa.
Costa has come out with a limited release t-shirt to help support OCEARCH.
Nice shirt. I think I’ll get me one of those.
“Costa’s support allows us to create video content so that the world can see what happens on expedition. They see it on the Expedition Blog and by following Costa and OCEARCH on Facebook and Twitter. Costa brings our collaborative shark research into everyone’s home and onto their mobile device, in near real time,” says Chris Fischer, OCEARCH Founding Chairman and Expedition Leader. “With the new line of Costa Limited Edition OCEARCH gear they are expanding their support so more work can be done for the ocean.”
California has a shark fin ban in place. There was a good, long run up to the ban going into place to let restaurants serving shrark fin soup run through their existing stock. Well, some folks didn’t get the memo (really, they got it, but they didn’t care anyway).
Michael Kwong owns Kwong Yip.
State authorities Friday announced the seizure of more than 2,000 pounds of shark fins from a San Francisco seafood distributor in what is the first major bust under a new California law barring the sale of the traditional Chinese delicacy.
It was likely thousands of sharks.
Shark fins for sale.
My daughter is off school the next two days and that could only mean one thing… we were going to go fish the pier.
Love this girl
As always, I’m amazed at her stamina out there. We got there just shy of 10:00 AM and left just a bit after 3:00 PM. We didn’t touch a fish until about 2:00 PM. That’s a whole lot of waiting.
Today was interesting in that we got there as the tide was coming in and we found the end of the pier full of rods and fishermen. We took a corner I knew wasn’t in prime position and we waited. While we wanted the guys down in the far corner, where I wanted to be, crushed. They had a fish on about every 15 minutes. We were doing nothing but watching one guy catch fish after fish after fish. It was humbling.
When the tide turned, hours later, we immediately hooked up and then hooked up again 2 minutes later, and then 5 minutes after that and then we missed a few fish in the next 20 minutes.
Amazing how much the tide can influence the fishing even when you are only measuring spots 60 feet apart.
A day well spent, even if no flies were used in the creation of these memories.
Not only do I love sharks, but my girl loves sharks. She will hang out at the pier with me for hours and hours and hours, mostly just waiting for something to happen. This is time without screens of any kind. All the entertainment is that which we make ourselves. It’s wonderful.
We were out at the pier again yesterday and it was great. We got two Leopard Sharks and got to see several others. On a more unhappy note I had to tell a guy his two Leopards were undersized (36″ is the minimum size and his were probably 24″ and 20″). The guy was just clueless.
Another guy had three Seven Gill sharks on a rope. I can’t keep people from taking sharks out of the bay, but when I went back home to read up on the regs I saw the legal limit is actually one Seven Gill. So, one guy probably killed two undersized Leopards and another guy was two over the limit.
Frustrating and probably more regulation breaking than I’ve seen in a single day in a long time.
My girl with a 24″ Leopard. Damn those things are pretty.
This is one of the coolest videos you’ll ever see when it comes to sharks on the flats.
I love sharks. I love seeing them when I’m out fishing. They are amazing, unique creatures, under threat because of us. I’ve been close to several sharks, but it is safe to say I haven’t been close to one this large.
I love this video.
