Quote:
Originally Posted by FullFlavorPike
I ate a ~180lb thresher one time because I thought it wasn't going to make it if I tried the release. In hindsight, I bet it would have been fine. Sharks don't die easy. I'll never try to eat and give away that much shark again. I still haven't gotten back a taste for thresher (or swordfish, or mako, which taste damn near the same) after eating nothing but grilled thresher tacos and thresher en escabeche for a week longer than I care to.
They're awesome to hook up on though. I bet you had fun! The aerial shenanigans are a hoot. I am not surprised by the foul hook. Lots of them get landed that way, as the tend to chew you off otherwise when you hook them on your 30-40# YT rig.
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Hahaha good point! You have to REALLY like that particular meat if you're gonna stock up on 150-200# of it! Last season my buddy and I caught a 300lb bluefin on the kite, then came into a wide open BFT bite on the way back. We landed 3 more in the 60-80lb range. Ended up giving the "small" ones away to the guys working the weigh station at the dock because we knew we'd have our work cut out for us with the big one. Filleting, cleaning and vacuum-sealing all night. Way more meat than we needed. We gave away a 10-15# ziplock bag to anyone walking by the garage that night! All this was going through my head as he was reeling this shark in...
And I know it's really common to foul hook these guys, most often in the tail. If you reel them in backwards, their survival rates post-release drop significantly, which sucks. Fortunately this one was hooked in the pectoral fin on the right side, so she had PLENTY of energy to launch and thrash at the side of my buddy's kayak! He only got one little tail-slap on the top of his knee. You can hear him say "Ow." in the video.