Quote:
Originally Posted by lowprofile
I'm going to give it my all to get the biggest fish of each species i can. fishing just to fish is fun, but i want a 4 hour fight   |
If you really want to fish for adult Ts you should read Fred Archers books on them. I've posted some things over the years but he's got a good general book on how to do it, that explains the special gear etc.. you need to target Bigger T sharks.
Basically there are two behavior groups juveniles and adults and they behave in different ways. Adult T's are much tougher then pups under 150 pounds they fight harder and longer then anything you can imagine. It's something you can't really get until you tie into a really big one. People say swords are tougher but I'm not sure they are right one that one. Archer claims the only thing that compares is Giant blue fin but I've never caught one so I wouldn't know.
A big T will really bust your ass and often fight itself to death. My largest was just over fourteen and a half feet long. That fish sounded 400 yards straight down when I hooked it and stayed down there 1200 feet down for almost a hour traveling five miles in a straight line, before it decided to come up and start jumping. Imagine being hooked to a airplane 1200 feet in the sky moving slowly north while you follow it on the ground. That's kind of what it was like. I couldn't even budge it, I couldn't of pulled it up, I just followed along putting as much pressure as I could waiting. Finally it just came up on it's own, so fast it created a huge bow in my line, so much so that my line was still pointing down when it start jumping thirty feet out of the water a hundred yards ahead of me. They make Marlin look like pussies. Eventually we ended up getting close enough to gaff it, but I only got it because we were able to follow it in the relative comfort and safety in a boat and wait it out.
I only keep adult Ts when they die on the line. I could probably kill a dozen or so a year if I wanted to. I quit posting about them because too many people started fishing for them, as a direct result of what me and a few others posted on BD and elsewhere. It was my first big lesson about fishing in the internet. Used to be I'd be the only one out there or maybe one of my buddies would be targeting them as well. Then due to the internet it went to hundreds of boats killing hundreds of sharks a day, after a while it made me kind of sick.
Now it seems to have calmed down a bit. Most people think there are so many more small ones then large ones, but that's because they do not understand their migration or how to target them, which honestly suits me just fine.
I will say that juvenile Ts stay tight to the coast for a longer period of the year then large ones. Big ones migrate through each spring, and they do come in close enough to target with a kayak, but I'd say you are highly unlikely to land one over 200 pounds.
When I first got into kayaking I got an idea that Id' like to take a big one over 200 pounds from the Yak. First day I tried I hooked a good one off Dana point. My take at the time was that with the same gear that I'd use in my skiff I could land one the same size. So I was fishing with an international, rollers, 80 pound. I had that shark on for longer then it took to land my 14+ T, never got it closer then a hundred feet down, when I was maybe five miles offshore I started thinking there even if I got it there was no way I could paddle it back to shore. I was dead tired, just couldn't get enough lift on it, and there was no way i could of towed it back anyway. At that point started thinking about trying to get it off. I gave it slack, pumped the rod trying to get it to spit the hook, but there was no way I was going to unhook it, and with 80 pound I could not break it off. I felt like a total idiot.
Finally after a few more miles I gave up and just cut it off. I figured better leave it towing a bunch of line then having it die on the line and then not be able to do anything with it.
If you want to target bigger ones I'd suggest finding someone with a skiff to fish them. If you want a long fight on kayak trying beating a 100 to 150 class T on ten pound. My buddy Steve does that all the time and it's a real blast.
I mean how big do you really need? Most people way overestimate their weight anyway.
This female is around 178:
This Male is around the same size.
Shark looks a lot bigger then me, but I'm 6'1" and 185 pounds.
Both those fish were taped and weighed on certified scales, and their about as big a T I'd say I could be land off a unassisted kayak, and that's pushing it. The first was five miles out of Newport, the second only a mile or so off Dana Point. Both of those I caught within thirty minutes of putting a bait in the water, if you know how to target them they are not hard to catch. Unfortunately both were tailhooked and died on the line which lead to two very short seasons for me.
In contrast a real T like this one is in my opinion right out of the question for a kayak.
I couldn't even find a scale big enough to weigh that one up here in LA, and there is no way I could of brought it in to the dock alone on a kayak.
Just my take though. Good luck. I just think if you target adult T sharks from a kayak you may end up with a lot more then you bargained for.
Jim