* Blue Shark – Trip Report

The 2014 Shark fishing season is well under way. Many boats have been reporting decent catches.

We took a run out in a Bellavista Hotel boat to check out the caliber of the fishing ourselves.  We set our drift complementary to the prevailing wind. I had heard of some boats struggling to catch enough mackerel for a session. Thankfully we had a Rubby Dubby Block on board on the day. The frozen gives around three to four hours chum depending on the conditions. In fairness after last years results while using the frozen block I now would not fish with anything else.

Our first day out we had to wait 40mins for our first run. After that it was consistent sharks until we gave up! The general size was very big and this resulted in some tired anglers! We had lots of sharks swimming around the boat. The second trip we had to wait nearly 60 minutes before we had a run.  Again the sharks arrived in force and we have to defend our rubby dubby block on a few occasions.

So far so good. The traces featured in our article worked a treat. One shark did manage to wrap itself at the side of the boat and while untangling it it did manage to get its teeth on the 250lb mono – cut through it like butter. I had forgotten to file some barbs on the traces and it made unhooking quite difficult-something to note for all small boat anglers.