Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Why I kill sharks

For cripes sake we gotta get real here.

We use to catch sharks on long line rigs by the hundreds.
The market was and is for the fins.
We'd strip the fins and cut the carcass open so they'd sink and dump them over board.

I had a pet food market for white roe Mullet (males) and they wouldn't touch those sharks, so over board they always went.

The only way you could market the shark fin's was to dry them first, I'd have fin's hanging from strings all around my back patio.
Even though the fins brought good money, they were sold by the pound and I'll tell ya right now it takes a schit load of fins to make a pound once they are dried.

They are quite comparable weight wise to dried Morel mushrooms vs fresh.

We fished the crap outta those sharks along the Florida coast through the 70's and 80's.

Florida prohibited finning in 1992, with federal law following in 2000, by requiring sharks be landed in whole condition. In 2010, the Shark Conservation Act strengthened prohibition, making it unlawful to remove fins at sea, have possession of fins aboard a fishing vessel, or transfer fins from one vessel to another at sea.
An international prohibition was adopted in 2005. There are still no international limits on shark catch that I am aware of, it's just all about slowing down the massive fin harvest.

You can still kill sharks, you just can't do it for the profit in the fin's.

I never saw a shortage of sharks in all those years.
During the same time frame we wiped out the Red Drum with commercial harvest as well as the King Mackerel.

Florida is and has always been short on fish management skills. It's always everything or nothing.

The King's and Red's came back after the fishing of them was banned, saltwater species seem to have a knack for that.....

Before the question is asked, those shark fin's were used to make soup which not so long ago was pretty popular in seafood restaurants in the coastal regions around the south....

Gar feed primarily on carp and buffalo Ralph and they have been overfish mainly by bowfishing.

Ghost, I could try some shark fin soup but I'd have to carry a big book of the sharks of NA with me and a computer to see what sizes and numbers humans are allowed to eat. We cant eat some of the slow species of sharks other sharks eat. You can go to jail for eating the type only other sharks are allowed to eat.

The result is most people say to hell with it. You'd think there was a govt plan behind that plan if you were a conspiracy theorist- or realist.

They cant figure out that when people are afraid of getting cited for killing a shark, the bad sharks (the ones in high supply) that kill and eat the good sharks (the ones in short supply) just dont get killed and their populations remain high. Humm, maybe they did figure that out.

Jag,

It sounds to me like you want to save the fish population by not having any regulations. If that happened, humans would wipe out your preferred species long before sharks.

IMHO & YMMV

That is great news, it means there are still schit loads of sharks.....

I've seen different.

Mainly you can still catch some bass in Rayburn because BASS and public sentiment have made keeping any verboten. Also, Texas wildlife recs against eating them due to toxins. Oh, it was ok years ago before they started protecting Texas rivers from toxic inflow, but not now. They are dangerous now.

It would blow your mind to see their recommended restricted list.

Now we are starting to have professional walley and crappie competitions. It wont be long before they are on the MORE protected list.

I was fishing Ratburn and Livingston before they ever completely filled up.

25 years later there were still schools of bass coming up and covering a few acres. Thousands. Get a limit of 10 iirc from 3-6 pounds. But, that was back when commercial buffalo fishermen ran long nets catching buffalo. They also caught and killed thousands of gator and and other big gar. Yeah, sometimes they would get a catfish or big bass. I knew some of those men

BASS came along and raised hell fearing commercial fishermen were carrying a bass home at times and eating one. BS, the fines for getting caught with a netted bass would put a man out of business.

They werent concerned about the fact carp and buffalo suck up billions of game fish eggs a year. You could worm fish submerged creeks through timber and find a huge area with 4-7 lb bass and fish them for a week or two before the big gar congregated enough to move them out.

Well, they finally got rid of the netters and the bass populations declined to todays fraction of what they once were.

Modern fish and game management in action.

After the bass decline, in size and numbers, my cousin and I would go a mile or so up the Pophers Creek arm and tie or anchor where the old tree line crossed the creek banks.

Fish and wait. Maybe catch a stray feeder or two. After a while we would see the big boils of the big gar rolling and heading toward us a half mile away. Time to set out your bag of grape fliptail worms and blue and white Heddon Torpedos. Then the escaping schools of bass would hit, headed for the safety of shallow water and dead timber structure.

We would have 30 or so minutes of fast action, until the feeding behemoths were upon us. Then, it was over.

Rayburn used to be called the Bass Factory. It WAS called the Bass Factory. No more. Thank you, Modern Game Management.

That it is for certain!

Man... the guys an Optometrist, political science expert, conspiracy theorist, social studies expert, white supremacist, and now a fisheries biologist? Im sure I didnt cover them all, just post a new topic and he will certainly express his expert opinion.

I dont know how he gets all that in, when hes on here 24hrs a day.....

You know you are one bored mother fugker when you find yourself trying to rid the world of its shark problem, from West Texas.

LOL

You and I are just going to have to agree to disagree. I like the natural world, including the prey as well as the predators. You want to rule it, I want to enjoy it.

Peace to you.

I was being facetious.

Jags concern about sharks is every bit as relevant as his concern about black people.

I wasnt.

It is written: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered

Of course, the heathens disagree. It's much more interesting when mountain lions and bears are not hunted enough to maintain a fear of man. It keeps more outdoorsmen on their toes.

That's why we have wolves decimating our wild ungulate herds.

Roger, this reminds me of years ago when guys were raising hell about the increasing flocks of cormorants and worrying about the deleterious effect on game fish populations.

Fish and Game said they mainly ate trash fish.

They spent a lot of sportsmans money and did a big study and time dragged on a few years, iirc, and they never released the results. Iirc, it took legal action to get the results of the study released.

The findings were that the birds were more disastrous to game fish populations and ate more bass and crappie than anyone could have ever imagined.

Nevertheless, due to some treaty with Mexico it is illegal, as far as I know, to kill one. Beneficial species, I guess. I expect they are eaten in Mexico and dont pose a significant problem to their game fish.

You can be arrested for killing crows, blackbirds and ravens if you arent protecting crops or such.

Federal Migratory Bird Act.

Oh yeah, just wait until the federal bird cops get more people in the field.

I expect the country is well populated by federal class criminals.

The Feds are much more knowledgable in managing our critters in such a manner as to restrict our original constitutional freedoms.

People kill stuff

Wolves, Sharks, Bears ect

We people don't like competition

I dont like essentially unrestricted predation on game I'm not typically allowed to be a predator of.

Except, you can legally hunt crows...


Jag sure does eat a lot of crow on this forum..... he shouldnt of made that mistake lol

Those hammers migrate each year at same time w tarpons run. It’s happened forever and always will.