Big Mako

[gradywhite273]

found this video of 819lb mako caught in california, i think that strike zone is one of the teams on the ultimate shark tournament on espn.

tim


us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=2&guideContext=65.72&pmmsid=1701513

[Tuna Taxi]

If they are one of the gangs of bozos that were on last year's shark fishing TV show, they are lucky to be alive. I never saw so much gaff-hacking and cluster-fucking in my life. They make Rhodekill look like a master gaffer.

Hopefully our east coast reps are showing these fruit & nut fisher-people how to catch a fish without becoming part of the food chain.

[HOLWACHAGOT]

If they are one of the gangs of bozos that were on last year's shark fishing TV show, they are lucky to be alive. I never saw so much gaff-hacking and cluster-fucking in my life. They make Rhodekill look like a master gaffer.

Hopefully our east coast reps are showing these fruit & nut fisher-people how to catch a fish without becoming part of the food chain.

[GoinCoastal]

Nice shark......wonder how long they fought it.

[Capt. Brian Daley]

the whole event is clown time

[Captain Fred Archer]

I only saw one of the televised shark tournaments, the one up at Martha's a year or two ago. I haven't seen the one you guys are talking about, mainly because I believe that "good theater" for the networks is probably the worst and scariest stuff that some shark or any other kind of fishermen might do in a tournament. I'm sure that they'd much rather have scenes of Pandemonium and cockpit and shark madness than a crew of true pros calmly and efficiently fighting a big shark. Rather than find that to be the truth, I have merely skipped whatever shark tournament stuff has appeared on the tube, with the exception of that first one that I watched.

Speaking of which, I saw some downright dreadful, flat stupid, and dangerous behavior in that one too.

Another thing that I do not like is the killing of big, mostly gravid, trophy gene carrying female mako sharks being killed. With their extremely low reproductive rates, make sharks are in trouble all over the world and I hate to see them killed for money - commercial fisherman OR tournament fisherman money - the only difference being that the "sport fisherman" who wins a tournament gets one helluva lot more money per pound than any commercial fisherman ever could. I know that this is an unpopular position here, but I don't give a damn about that. Others can and do do what they want to and so do I.

Seems like the west coast guys just can't get any credit, or at least their fishery can't. I have read the pious remarks of some here concerning the little, baby west coast makos, but when the big ones do start rolling in at a far faster pace than my old home waters, the silence of the naysayers is deafening! That 819 was joined by a 759 a week ago and a 1,059 a few weeks before that. And those were just fish that were killed. Some more equally huge ones have been released lately with some of those releases caught on tape. More fishermen here will release a fish like that, or not even bait it in the first place out of concern that the fish could die on them before the release.

There's a nice plate of crow, all cooked up and waiting for anyone who jabbered his jaws about the puny west coast sharks and would like to set the record straight. Nuff said there.

Female mako sharks first become sexually mature at about 600#.

They have a two year gestation period, one of or THE longest in the animal kingdom.

The average litter is four pups, replicating the male and female for a two year period. (Litters can be a bit larger when the population is under extreme stress-no one knows why.)

With the small number of makos being caught nowadays compared to a decade ago, is killing big, rare, pregnant (or otherwise) breeder females a good idea? Is it an intelligent thing to do?

Learn about the animal and what is happening to it and enjoy one of the most exciting books you have ever read...