Shark infestation at Shark Bay, NSW

Author: josh

Category: Trip Reports

Created on Thursday, 07 January 2010 21:47

Written by Josh

When I heard news that fellow Clarence coast kayak fisho Peter Bostock caught a 15kg Spanish Mackerel at Woody Head yesterday I couldn't resist the temptation to get out of work early and hit the water. With a sizable crowd watching I launched into Shark Bay and took off into the north, where I soon encountered birds. Lots and lots of birds... everywhere. Yep... I had no trouble believing Slim caught a spanyard yesterday. Trolling a large red-headed hard-body lure and casting a large no-name paddle-tail shad soft plastic it wasn't long before both of them had been bitten straight off. By the time I'd lost my 3rd lure I knew it would barely matter what I threw out today - it would get eaten. The trick would be to secure a catch without getting the line chomped.

The fourth hit - on the lighter line - held true and a good hard fight was under way. At first I felt sure I'd finally hooked a big Spanish mackerel, but after 15 minutes I started to wonder. Whatever was on the other end did go for some lightning runs, but it also had a lot of brute strength. After a gruelling 23 minute fight, this blacktip shark - measuring over 5' - came to the surface. It was pretty tired and at first I contemplated trying to remove the lure, but hooked firmly in it's mouth it was just too risky. Before letting it go, however, I deployed the shark shield and switched it on. All of the sudden the shark had a second wind and it tore off again - just as I expected. Soon after I wound it back to the yak and cut it free.

That was just the start of an arm-destroying afternoon, with four more fights just like it. With each catch, however, the sharks got just that little bit bigger. The last one - which was foul hooked on the tail - had be precariously close to 6'. I did try to remove the lure on the last shark, but every time I managed to get it's tail to poke out of the water it would thrash around and race tear off. It became too dangerous to put my hand anywhere near the lure, so in the end I had to give up.

At that point I decided enough was enough and sailed in without any lines out. There were simply too many sharks out there today and as fun as they are to catch, that's not what I was looking for. It was starting to look as if that's all that was around. And when I say around, I mean infestation. I saw at least 10 - 12 sharks leap out of the water today, one of them right off my bow. At one point I genuinely wondered if having the tramp out was a good idea, as I figured there was a fair chance a shark might jump onto it. The only thing there was more of than sharks was bait fish - and there were millions - no, squillions on them. Oh yeah.... I also caught a nice sized bonito, which I returned relatively unharmed.

It really was a very exciting days fishing today and I was able to capture most of the action on video. Look forward to the bulk of the footage being seen for the 1st time in War on Fish, episode 2. Here's a couple of screenshots to offer as a teaser: