Big Bigger Biggest

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by lowprofile

....the largest i've seen caught from shore was about 10'6" and the bait was dropped in 20ft of water (350yards from shore). right around the beginning of spring break and there were no sharks attacks in the area, even with 8 mako's over 9ft landed from the beach.

Too Cool!!!

I'm sure I've told you that I grew up fishing sharks from shore in the Gulf. I started fishing them in the early seventies with senators and dacron. What I probably never told you though is that we never caught any Makos at all, I never even saw one till I came out here.

We caught Tigers, Bulls, scalloped and Greater Hammerheads, Lemons, Blacktips all the Coastal species both large and small but we never got Shortfin Mako's.

The only Makos I heard about were all caught well offshore usually a hundred miles or more. They didn't even come into the rigs back then.

The first one I heard of caught in the surf was taken in the late 90s and when I was told about it my first reaction was that had to be total bullshit story. Now I'm starting to think that possibly so many of the large coastal sharks were commercially overfished that it left essentially an opening for more Makos to move in and take advantage of inshore feeding grounds closer to shore.

What's interesting also is the time of year. You're talking about catching them in March? When I fished the Gulf we mainly caught large sharks between May and October but Tigers, Hammers and the really big ones never showed up until water cleared up and got warmer in June. What was the water temp when you caught those Makos? Sounds like they are coming through before the water warms up.

Though the same species your Florida Makos and our California Makos probably have some pretty different habits due to what they feed on. We have large numbers of seals you don't so your larger Makos are most likely feeding almost exclusively on fish. The Islands here are surrounded by deep water, yours are in shallows and surrounded by reefs. There is also a greater diversity of fish inshore in the gulf which is why it's traditionally had a huge coastal shark population of large sharks that we just do not have out here. So your dealing with pretty different conditions, and maybe a different behavior set in response to them.

I'd love to catch a big Mako in the surf, but I wouldn't want to swim around one. Tigers used to scare the shit out me when I saw them shallow, but I'd pretty scared to be swimming around larger makos as well. At least Tigers move pretty slow compared to Makos... ha ha

Greats stuff I envy you.