Bear in mind that I started shark fishing off the Jersey coast over forty years ago and naturally, I was a hard core chummer back then. The first time I ever even heard of trolling for sharks was after we moved Shimano to California. They had a shark out there that a lot of people called "bonito sharks" that I knew were, in fact, makos. There was no commercial chum in California at that time, so we began catching mackerel, grinding them up and freezing them in five gallon buckets and storing them in a chest freezer in the Shimano warehouse. We fished my buddy's 38 footer and caught lots of makos - not threshers, but lots of makos, mostly small to medium sized ones and an occasional big one.

My buddy the tackle buyer from K-Mart had planned a visit and was hot to do some of the shark fishing we were always talking about, so we planned a trip. Then came a broken engine and my pr and ad guy, Russ Johnson discovered a charterboat named "Bongos" that fished sharks. Captain Joe Barian was the owner/operator and Russ told me that they guy caught a lot of makos, so I told him to book the trip.

We had two buckets of frozen chum with us when we boarded Bongos that morning. Joe asked what was in the buckets and when I told him "shark chum" he said, "Chumming for sharks only attracts blue sharks out here. We catch all of our makos trolling." "Trolling"? For sharks? I will never forget thinking that this guy was nuts. But I learned long ago to pay attention to the way that others caught fish. This guy was a charter captain, too, and I have always listened very carefully to that kind of fisherman if he is willing to talk about how he catches fish. In this case, the guy was going to show us. I thought, "No way!" and I was glad I had the chum for when the "foolishness" was over.

I didn't believe that it worked and I KNEW that chumming worked, so I made a deal with Joe; the first half of the day we'd troll and the second half, we'd chum. He had no choice and agreed. I watched closely while Joe and his mate rigged up fresh mackerel on heavy, chrome headed lures with big skirts on them. He trolled one off a downrigger and one flat, with about a twelve ounce torpedo sinker in front of it. After we got about ten miles out he slowed down and put the two baits out and began trolling at about three or four knots. Just about the time (all of about ten minutes) that I was going to say, "This doesn't work, let's start chumming" the flat line rod went off and damned it there wasn't mako attached to it! We caught that one and one more and lost two or three before I reminded Joe of our deal, after which we chummed up three fish, including the biggest of the day.

The ironic part about that day was that Joe did a lot of chumming after that and went on to become the first commercial shark chum maker on the west coast, while I started studying and learning this "new" shark trolling thing and eventually wrote a couple of books on it. (Thank you for the nice words Vike.) Unlike I guess some were, I wasn't born knowing everything about every kind of fishing and I still don't, but much of what I do know I learned from reading books, "extreme" or otherwise. I read everything that I can lay my hands on about fishing because I learned a long time ago that knowledge is the key to success in this game and most others.

Now, for some of the questions…

Do we chum at all? Oh yes, there is a lot of chumming done on the west coast. The primary catch is makos, with a much smaller number of threshers - they are an exceptional troll fish, even moreso than the makos. The facts are that some pretty sophisticated twists to the chumming game have been developed out here, including night chumming, power chumming and bait and switch chumming to avoid the blue sharks and to match the size of the tackle up to the size of the fish that show. All three twists work extremely well and will work back east too.

What are the conditions that would suggest that trolling is a better option that day?
1. Whenever you want to catch thresher sharks, period.

2. When there is little or no drift. Just sitting in one spot,
chumming is a silly waste of time (with the chum sinking straight down to the bottom you might get into some black sea bass, porgies or fluke though - me, I want to catch sharks.)

3. In areas where the shark population has been depleted and the fish are spread far and wide. Sound familiar?

4. When you want to cover a current/temp break quickly and efficiently. Ditto for thoroughly covering high spots, banks, wrecks, etc.

5. When the fish are concentrated in one rather small area (usually on a big concentration of bait) and you are a smart fisherman and want to keep fishing right there with them.

6. Whenever you want to catch thresher sharks, period.

Do we chum while trolling? None of the guys that I know do. Of course, makos have such incredible olfactory organs that they can and do detect the scent, oils and blood from the fillets and whole baits that we troll on our lures much of the time.

What speeds do we troll? As it is with all trolling, we let the fish tell us what they want on a given day. If we are fishing the surface, plus deeper water with a downrigger, the rigger limits us to maybe four knots. However, we fish a lot of cleat planers and they allow us to fish both deep and fast. We have caught both makos and threshers up at marlin speeds, but I would say that the average without downriggers is more like six knots and a bit more. Remember, both of these game sharks run down and kill prey like bluefish, bonito and even tuna every day of their lives. They have no problem whatsoever running down a fast trolled lure.

Does depth have any bearing on trolling or chumming? No, except that radical depth changes are usually good places to fish. We fish far deeper water than you do there. For example, one of our nearshore banks is call the 270. 270 feet is pretty deep for a bank, right? Well, the 270 that I am referring to here is 270 FATHOMS, or 1,620 feet to the top of this bank! We fish the current/temp breaks and upwellings created by such banks, rather than the bottom features per se.

As far as a comparison of biomasses is concerned, I am not qualified to answer that question except to say that I understand that makos are on the comeback trail back there with increasing numbers of small fish. Meanwhile, our makos and threshers are under terrible pressure from a large drift gillnet fleet. In either case, these are hunter/killer sharks that chase down their food and the guy that covers the most productive water the right ways on a given day is going to consistently outfish the guy who lets the currents and wind determine where he fishes.

When it comes to threshers, twelve years ago they were as rare a catch here as they were and are back there, but there were big numbers of them here. When west coast fishermen learned the secrets for trolling them the right way they became an incredibly common catch. And yes, it took a book to do it.

Our average thresher is 275# with good numbers of both smaller and much bigger fish. Most thresher fishermen that I know limit themselves to one for the table per season. Many release most of their makos and many release all of them.

If you don't mind, I'll get into the Toads another time. I've got some magazine articles on deadline that I have to finish up or else. Besides, they are worth their own post - they are incredible shark attractors, they're cheap, easy to use and anybody can make their own.

Hard core New Jersey shark chummer Fred Archer fifteen years ago…"Trolling? For sharks? You gotta be shettin' me, man! Yah catch sharks chummin', not trollin', everbody knows dat dere. Jeez, what a crazy ting ta say! Dat guy dere is fulla donkee dust, youse know?"

"Munch, crunch, chew…" The sounds of Fred Archer eating his words about an hour and a half after he said those very words up there. It don't work if you don't do it. That's the ONLY time it don't work and if you just stop and think about how makos and threshers catch their meals and how fast those meals vamoose when Doctor Death or the one with the the lightning fast, machete sharp tail comes gunning for them, well, I hope that you'll agree.

No ball busting at all…"It don't work if you don't do it."