Post by p on Jun 4, 2020 6:48:23 GMT -5
Commercial Shark Fishing in the 60,s and 70,s. By Dream Rider (Ray Scott)
I was only eight years old as I watched in wide eyed wonder as dad lowered himself over the side of the family shark boat “Olga”. He was in the process of retrieving the massive, high valued liver from a ten ft Bronze whaler shark which had been caught on one of the shark lines only a half hour earlier. We had tried winching the 1000lb monster on deck but our puny winch couldn’t handle it, so undaunted dad lashed the dead shark in close to the boat, and while reaching down, slit a great gash down the side of the sharks fat belly, allowing the five foot long liver to float free. The liver was too heavy for dad to lift out in one piece, so he started cutting it up into manageable sizes. In the process he inadvertently cut the egg sack which contained approx 6-8, fourteen-inch wriggling babies. As soon as the babies felt the sea water, they burst out of there like they had some where to go in a hurry. I will never forget what happened next. The babies only swam three feet from their dead mother when they got a scent of the floating liver. Doing a 180 degree turn they all came flashing in and started to tear into their mother’s liver like a school of thrashing Piranhas. Dad managed to rescue most of the liver but was in fear of losing a finger such was the ferocity of the attack.
The Olga with me at the stern in my school shorts
Sharks coming aboard
We were a Shark fishing family, or at least at the time dad (Len) and his brother Mick were. Later my brother Ken and I took over the family business and operated it through to the late 1980,s.
In the 1950, s the original Scott Bros had set up a fish processing plant on the river banks of our home town Helensville, which is situated in the southern reaches of the Kaipara harbor New Zealand. During the summer months we targeted the School Shark (Tope) for the flesh and liver, and as a by-product, the fins were hung up and dried for the Chinese market. The flesh was processed in the factory, packaged and frozen for export to Australia, which was in high demand for the fish and chips takeaway trade. The white flesh also made it a popular choice on the tables of many households. The liver was used by various chemical companies as a base for cosmetics, soaps and medical uses.
.
The experience with the Bronze Whaler was common while shark fishing. They and the great whites caused havoc with the long lines resulting in a lot of lost gear. (More about this later)
Hand hauling an 8 foot Bronze Whaler aboard
There were two and often three boats in the family fleet, ranging from 36ft -42ft in length. This, we found to be the optimum size, if any bigger they proved to be too cumbersome to be handled in the fast running tides that was normal for the Kaipara Harbor, (one of the largest harbors in the world), any smaller and the vessels could not carry the weight of a good load of sharks.
The long lines that we used were made up of poly polypropylene three quarters of an inch thick and approx300 - 500yrds in length
A typical day would start well before dawn with the loading of bait which consisted of the lesser quality fish that had been caught and stored in the company freezers during the off season.
During the 2-3 hour journey down to the fishing grounds there was feverish activity by the two man crew cutting up the bait to the correct proportions and placing it on the large shark hooks, these hooks were spliced onto the trace which was made up from half inch nylon and 3-4ft in length. The other end of the trace had a large stainless-steel clip attached, which would enable the trace to be clipped onto the main line at the required spacing.
While the crew were preparing the traces, which meant baiting and placing them into manageable bunches. The skipper would place the boat on auto pilot and proceed to set the lines up, ready for running out. He would start close to the bow by carefully coiling the main line at his feet between the wheel house and the vessels side rails, every 10-12 ft he would clip on a baited trace, carefully placing the hook and two thirds of the trace over the rail allowing the hooks to hang down the outside of the rail. He would quickly coil another 10 -12 ft of main line at his feet then clip on another trace and placing it next to the previous one, making sure that they did not cross over and become entangled with its neighbor this continued until approx 150 hooks were set up. He would then attach a long hauling rope to each end with a large buoy at one end and a 25lb anchor attached to the base of the hauling ropes. These anchors were needed to keep the lines from moving in the strong currents. And the very large buoys were needed to stay on the surface and not be pulled under by the strong current and out of sight. The same procedure was repeated on the other side of the vessel.
When reaching the fishing grounds, we would then proceed to run the lines out. With local knowledge, plus use of the fish finder and a lot of luck we would hope to find the schools of sharks. Setting the throttle and running across the tide. The buoy and hauling rope were thrown overboard, then the anchor. As the vessel made its way through the water the main line uncoiled at the operator’s feet as he deftly placed each trace over the side. This job was not for the faint heart, he had to have his full attention on where he placed his feet and at the same time making sure that each trace and hook was free from its neighbor to smoothly go over the side with out any hang ups. Any false moves with his feet and he could be caught up and whisked over the side to almost certain death. Only the quickest of mind and reaction were allowed any where near the lines while running out took place. All this while the vessel was heaving and bucking in what ever the sea conditions were at the time. This task was usually carried out by the skipper or a very experienced top crew hand and he always wore a very sharp knife in an easy accessible sheath worn on his belt at all times.
As soon as that line was run out, the crew were setting up another line in the empty space while the skipper cruised onto the chosen spot for his next line. When ready, the same procedure would take place. When that was completed, the third and fourth line was run out. Depending on conditions and available time, between three – five lines were run out bringing 450- 600 hooks into play. All this had to be carried out with precision on a heaving deck while running across the current. Too slow, and the tide would take control of the vessel resulting in poorly laid lines. Too fast and the hooks came out too fast and would start flying about in a very dangerous manner, causing hang ups and massive tangles and worse the flying hooks can bite into the operator pulling him over the side. This nearly happened to me one day while I was laying the lines out. The crewman at the controls allowed the speed to build up, and before he could correct it, a hook came flying at my face. Without hesitation I put my hand up to ward off the flying hook, with the result that the hook buried itself into the fleshy part of the palm of my hand. Another crew man seeing this rushed toward me preparing to cut the trace, I screamed at him to get out of the way as I knew that as soon as he cut the offending trace the build up of traces behind me would be released and would then cause greater chaos. I had to stand there and let the hook rip through my hand. Fortunately, it did not catch a bone as I would not have been able to free myself. By this time the crewman had bought the boat to a stand still and we quickly managed to clear the mess and carry on. My hand was a bit of a mess, but as skipper I had no time to see to it before the next line was ready to run out. After all the lines were set, every one enjoyed a much-needed rest and a feed leaving the lines in the water for between 3-4 hours.
After the lines had been soaking for a suitable period of time, the decks were cleared for action and the job of hauling them in began. Placing the vessel alongside the float, this was hooked aboard with the boat hook and the hauling rope placed around the winch capstan and the long job of hauling the lines began. After breaking the anchor free of the bottom, the line, traces, plus sharks started coming on board. When each shark came to the surface it was hauled in using the gaff, the trace unclipped from the main line and removed from the sharks’ jaw, the shark was then stacked on deck. Tails were removed to allow complete bleeding out for the flesh to remain white. It was back breaking work with little to no rest
. As soon as the line was completely on board, we would race over to the next line and start all over again. Once all the lines were hauled in, we would head for port while trunking the sharks. This involved removing head and guts leaving just the trunk, the liver removed and stored into drums. On returning to base we unloaded into the factory, and iced the shark trunks down for filleting the next day.
On a good day we would hope for 100 sharks plus per boat. Of course, sometimes we went home empty handed, conversely sometimes we would catch a huge haul, exceeding 200 and on very rare occasions 300 per catch (my personal record was 311). While it was exciting and financially rewarding, it was $$$$ hard work; those big catches created problems of stowage on board. The sharks would be stacked up to 15 deep and absolutely not a square inch left available on deck, making the job of trunking extremely difficult.
A good haul of 180 sharks with me helping sort out the tangle.
Heading back to port with a load of sharks
The constant handling of the rough skins of the sharks, wore the skin off our hands leaving them red raw, each day it become harder and harder to keep going. But while the shark run continued, we couldn’t stop. We had some amazing experiences, White Pointers and Bronze Whalers were a major problem as they would often treat our long lines as food larders. These brutes would cruise around the same grounds preying on the school sharks, often robbing our lines of the hapless school shark. It was not uncommon for a pair of White pointers to be hunting together resulting in many losses. Sometimes we would haul up a section of line where there was up to six heads minus their trunks left dangling on the lines and further on another 3-5 heads dangling on the line. Bronze Whalers were just as bad but they usually only resulting in a loss of one or two. One could only imagine the size of some of the White Pointers down there, some of the teeth marks measured one and a half inches across. On rare occasions a White Pointer would miss-calculate in their robbing forays and become entangled in the long line. As soon as they felt the line around them, they would start to spin in panic resulting in restricted mobility which eventually drowned them.
My father standing on the fin of a 12’ White Pointer
We always knew when we had one of these monsters on the line as the enormous weight made it extremely difficult to pull the whole mess to the surface. Often, we would be faced with a huge tangle of many yards of main line, entangled in all that would be many traces, school sharks and a 11-15 ft White Pointer. All this would have to be cleared up before we could continue with hauling up the rest of the line. Sometimes we would lose whole sections of long line where a large shark would cut through it when it was on its robbing spree. When this happened, we would race around to pick up the other end buoy and start hauling, hoping upon hope that we would be able to retrieve it all. Sometimes however, when two “Whites” worked together we would find the same result at the other end with the whole middle section of line, traces and sharks gone for ever.
Local Moari children playing on a 15’ White Pointer
“Whites” and “Bronzies” were not the only hazard we would encounter, huge stingrays were also a nuisance, sometimes these brutes grew to enormous sizes.
I remember on one occasion I was crewing for my father on the Olga, we were hauling the lines in and dad was having a major problem trying to free the line off the sea bed, the rope was smoking, the v belts driving the winch were slipping and screeching. “The bloody thing must be fouled on the bottom” dad said through clenched teeth, his arms and upper body vibrating from the strain. “We may have to cut the line” he yelled. When suddenly the line went slack and dad almost landed flat on his back. But more was to come; the line started to angle away from the boat and was hissing through the water at an incredible rate. The angle flattened out more and more until it was flat on the surface for a hundred yards or more, it was stretching with the terrible strain and was fairly singing through the water. When suddenly a huge black object shaped like a delta winged bomber came flying eight feet out of the water. The main line was stretched to an impossibly thin line, traces and sharks were flying in all directions. With a huge splash the Stingray fell back into the water and took off on another maddened run leaping out of the water several times trying to shake off the line. On one of these leaps the remainder of what sharks were left attached to the traces were sent cart wheeling twenty feet into the air. The Olga was spinning like a top in the water.
I was to find out later, when the Stingray had suddenly come off the bottom and the rope momentarily went slack, Dad had been caught unawares and while trying to steady himself, took his eyes off the winch. The slack line promptly crossed over on the winch drum in a massive tangle, causing the winch to stall, but worst still was dad’s inability to free the line off the winch. This left us at the mercy of the rampaging Stingray. One final flying leap for the skies and the line parted at the trace. The Stingray fell back into the water and was never seen again. We had no idea how big he was, but we were glad to see the last of him, as we set about clearing the carnage on deck.
Earlier that same year, dad had a huge Stingray trapped behind his nets while netting for flounder. When the tide left it stranded, it quickly died. Dad, just for fun towed it back to port where it was hauled out of the water and measured, while members of the public had a wonderful time oohing and aahing over it. It had a wing span of eight feet, and when it was cut open, fourteen flounder, eight snapper plus a large assortment of partially digested, indistinguishable fish came out of its cavernous stomach. Dad and I both agreed that the one we had hooked up on the shark line was considerably larger. We both estimate between 10 and 12 feet across
Fortunately, the large sharks and Stingray attacks were not too frequent, allowing us to catch up to Five thousand School sharks per year. The School Shark is a prodigious breeder, unlike most sharks that only produce 5-7 young per year; they would produce up to 20-30 per year, allowing them to keep the population up to good numbers. The whole industry collapsed when it was discovered that sharks, being the “end of the food chain” accumulated high levels of mercury, making it a health issue beyond our control.
Written by Dream Rider
I was only eight years old as I watched in wide eyed wonder as dad lowered himself over the side of the family shark boat “Olga”. He was in the process of retrieving the massive, high valued liver from a ten ft Bronze whaler shark which had been caught on one of the shark lines only a half hour earlier. We had tried winching the 1000lb monster on deck but our puny winch couldn’t handle it, so undaunted dad lashed the dead shark in close to the boat, and while reaching down, slit a great gash down the side of the sharks fat belly, allowing the five foot long liver to float free. The liver was too heavy for dad to lift out in one piece, so he started cutting it up into manageable sizes. In the process he inadvertently cut the egg sack which contained approx 6-8, fourteen-inch wriggling babies. As soon as the babies felt the sea water, they burst out of there like they had some where to go in a hurry. I will never forget what happened next. The babies only swam three feet from their dead mother when they got a scent of the floating liver. Doing a 180 degree turn they all came flashing in and started to tear into their mother’s liver like a school of thrashing Piranhas. Dad managed to rescue most of the liver but was in fear of losing a finger such was the ferocity of the attack.
The Olga with me at the stern in my school shorts
Sharks coming aboard
We were a Shark fishing family, or at least at the time dad (Len) and his brother Mick were. Later my brother Ken and I took over the family business and operated it through to the late 1980,s.
In the 1950, s the original Scott Bros had set up a fish processing plant on the river banks of our home town Helensville, which is situated in the southern reaches of the Kaipara harbor New Zealand. During the summer months we targeted the School Shark (Tope) for the flesh and liver, and as a by-product, the fins were hung up and dried for the Chinese market. The flesh was processed in the factory, packaged and frozen for export to Australia, which was in high demand for the fish and chips takeaway trade. The white flesh also made it a popular choice on the tables of many households. The liver was used by various chemical companies as a base for cosmetics, soaps and medical uses.
.
The experience with the Bronze Whaler was common while shark fishing. They and the great whites caused havoc with the long lines resulting in a lot of lost gear. (More about this later)
Hand hauling an 8 foot Bronze Whaler aboard
There were two and often three boats in the family fleet, ranging from 36ft -42ft in length. This, we found to be the optimum size, if any bigger they proved to be too cumbersome to be handled in the fast running tides that was normal for the Kaipara Harbor, (one of the largest harbors in the world), any smaller and the vessels could not carry the weight of a good load of sharks.
The long lines that we used were made up of poly polypropylene three quarters of an inch thick and approx300 - 500yrds in length
A typical day would start well before dawn with the loading of bait which consisted of the lesser quality fish that had been caught and stored in the company freezers during the off season.
During the 2-3 hour journey down to the fishing grounds there was feverish activity by the two man crew cutting up the bait to the correct proportions and placing it on the large shark hooks, these hooks were spliced onto the trace which was made up from half inch nylon and 3-4ft in length. The other end of the trace had a large stainless-steel clip attached, which would enable the trace to be clipped onto the main line at the required spacing.
While the crew were preparing the traces, which meant baiting and placing them into manageable bunches. The skipper would place the boat on auto pilot and proceed to set the lines up, ready for running out. He would start close to the bow by carefully coiling the main line at his feet between the wheel house and the vessels side rails, every 10-12 ft he would clip on a baited trace, carefully placing the hook and two thirds of the trace over the rail allowing the hooks to hang down the outside of the rail. He would quickly coil another 10 -12 ft of main line at his feet then clip on another trace and placing it next to the previous one, making sure that they did not cross over and become entangled with its neighbor this continued until approx 150 hooks were set up. He would then attach a long hauling rope to each end with a large buoy at one end and a 25lb anchor attached to the base of the hauling ropes. These anchors were needed to keep the lines from moving in the strong currents. And the very large buoys were needed to stay on the surface and not be pulled under by the strong current and out of sight. The same procedure was repeated on the other side of the vessel.
When reaching the fishing grounds, we would then proceed to run the lines out. With local knowledge, plus use of the fish finder and a lot of luck we would hope to find the schools of sharks. Setting the throttle and running across the tide. The buoy and hauling rope were thrown overboard, then the anchor. As the vessel made its way through the water the main line uncoiled at the operator’s feet as he deftly placed each trace over the side. This job was not for the faint heart, he had to have his full attention on where he placed his feet and at the same time making sure that each trace and hook was free from its neighbor to smoothly go over the side with out any hang ups. Any false moves with his feet and he could be caught up and whisked over the side to almost certain death. Only the quickest of mind and reaction were allowed any where near the lines while running out took place. All this while the vessel was heaving and bucking in what ever the sea conditions were at the time. This task was usually carried out by the skipper or a very experienced top crew hand and he always wore a very sharp knife in an easy accessible sheath worn on his belt at all times.
As soon as that line was run out, the crew were setting up another line in the empty space while the skipper cruised onto the chosen spot for his next line. When ready, the same procedure would take place. When that was completed, the third and fourth line was run out. Depending on conditions and available time, between three – five lines were run out bringing 450- 600 hooks into play. All this had to be carried out with precision on a heaving deck while running across the current. Too slow, and the tide would take control of the vessel resulting in poorly laid lines. Too fast and the hooks came out too fast and would start flying about in a very dangerous manner, causing hang ups and massive tangles and worse the flying hooks can bite into the operator pulling him over the side. This nearly happened to me one day while I was laying the lines out. The crewman at the controls allowed the speed to build up, and before he could correct it, a hook came flying at my face. Without hesitation I put my hand up to ward off the flying hook, with the result that the hook buried itself into the fleshy part of the palm of my hand. Another crew man seeing this rushed toward me preparing to cut the trace, I screamed at him to get out of the way as I knew that as soon as he cut the offending trace the build up of traces behind me would be released and would then cause greater chaos. I had to stand there and let the hook rip through my hand. Fortunately, it did not catch a bone as I would not have been able to free myself. By this time the crewman had bought the boat to a stand still and we quickly managed to clear the mess and carry on. My hand was a bit of a mess, but as skipper I had no time to see to it before the next line was ready to run out. After all the lines were set, every one enjoyed a much-needed rest and a feed leaving the lines in the water for between 3-4 hours.
After the lines had been soaking for a suitable period of time, the decks were cleared for action and the job of hauling them in began. Placing the vessel alongside the float, this was hooked aboard with the boat hook and the hauling rope placed around the winch capstan and the long job of hauling the lines began. After breaking the anchor free of the bottom, the line, traces, plus sharks started coming on board. When each shark came to the surface it was hauled in using the gaff, the trace unclipped from the main line and removed from the sharks’ jaw, the shark was then stacked on deck. Tails were removed to allow complete bleeding out for the flesh to remain white. It was back breaking work with little to no rest
. As soon as the line was completely on board, we would race over to the next line and start all over again. Once all the lines were hauled in, we would head for port while trunking the sharks. This involved removing head and guts leaving just the trunk, the liver removed and stored into drums. On returning to base we unloaded into the factory, and iced the shark trunks down for filleting the next day.
On a good day we would hope for 100 sharks plus per boat. Of course, sometimes we went home empty handed, conversely sometimes we would catch a huge haul, exceeding 200 and on very rare occasions 300 per catch (my personal record was 311). While it was exciting and financially rewarding, it was $$$$ hard work; those big catches created problems of stowage on board. The sharks would be stacked up to 15 deep and absolutely not a square inch left available on deck, making the job of trunking extremely difficult.
A good haul of 180 sharks with me helping sort out the tangle.
Heading back to port with a load of sharks
The constant handling of the rough skins of the sharks, wore the skin off our hands leaving them red raw, each day it become harder and harder to keep going. But while the shark run continued, we couldn’t stop. We had some amazing experiences, White Pointers and Bronze Whalers were a major problem as they would often treat our long lines as food larders. These brutes would cruise around the same grounds preying on the school sharks, often robbing our lines of the hapless school shark. It was not uncommon for a pair of White pointers to be hunting together resulting in many losses. Sometimes we would haul up a section of line where there was up to six heads minus their trunks left dangling on the lines and further on another 3-5 heads dangling on the line. Bronze Whalers were just as bad but they usually only resulting in a loss of one or two. One could only imagine the size of some of the White Pointers down there, some of the teeth marks measured one and a half inches across. On rare occasions a White Pointer would miss-calculate in their robbing forays and become entangled in the long line. As soon as they felt the line around them, they would start to spin in panic resulting in restricted mobility which eventually drowned them.
My father standing on the fin of a 12’ White Pointer
We always knew when we had one of these monsters on the line as the enormous weight made it extremely difficult to pull the whole mess to the surface. Often, we would be faced with a huge tangle of many yards of main line, entangled in all that would be many traces, school sharks and a 11-15 ft White Pointer. All this would have to be cleared up before we could continue with hauling up the rest of the line. Sometimes we would lose whole sections of long line where a large shark would cut through it when it was on its robbing spree. When this happened, we would race around to pick up the other end buoy and start hauling, hoping upon hope that we would be able to retrieve it all. Sometimes however, when two “Whites” worked together we would find the same result at the other end with the whole middle section of line, traces and sharks gone for ever.
Local Moari children playing on a 15’ White Pointer
“Whites” and “Bronzies” were not the only hazard we would encounter, huge stingrays were also a nuisance, sometimes these brutes grew to enormous sizes.
I remember on one occasion I was crewing for my father on the Olga, we were hauling the lines in and dad was having a major problem trying to free the line off the sea bed, the rope was smoking, the v belts driving the winch were slipping and screeching. “The bloody thing must be fouled on the bottom” dad said through clenched teeth, his arms and upper body vibrating from the strain. “We may have to cut the line” he yelled. When suddenly the line went slack and dad almost landed flat on his back. But more was to come; the line started to angle away from the boat and was hissing through the water at an incredible rate. The angle flattened out more and more until it was flat on the surface for a hundred yards or more, it was stretching with the terrible strain and was fairly singing through the water. When suddenly a huge black object shaped like a delta winged bomber came flying eight feet out of the water. The main line was stretched to an impossibly thin line, traces and sharks were flying in all directions. With a huge splash the Stingray fell back into the water and took off on another maddened run leaping out of the water several times trying to shake off the line. On one of these leaps the remainder of what sharks were left attached to the traces were sent cart wheeling twenty feet into the air. The Olga was spinning like a top in the water.
I was to find out later, when the Stingray had suddenly come off the bottom and the rope momentarily went slack, Dad had been caught unawares and while trying to steady himself, took his eyes off the winch. The slack line promptly crossed over on the winch drum in a massive tangle, causing the winch to stall, but worst still was dad’s inability to free the line off the winch. This left us at the mercy of the rampaging Stingray. One final flying leap for the skies and the line parted at the trace. The Stingray fell back into the water and was never seen again. We had no idea how big he was, but we were glad to see the last of him, as we set about clearing the carnage on deck.
Earlier that same year, dad had a huge Stingray trapped behind his nets while netting for flounder. When the tide left it stranded, it quickly died. Dad, just for fun towed it back to port where it was hauled out of the water and measured, while members of the public had a wonderful time oohing and aahing over it. It had a wing span of eight feet, and when it was cut open, fourteen flounder, eight snapper plus a large assortment of partially digested, indistinguishable fish came out of its cavernous stomach. Dad and I both agreed that the one we had hooked up on the shark line was considerably larger. We both estimate between 10 and 12 feet across
Fortunately, the large sharks and Stingray attacks were not too frequent, allowing us to catch up to Five thousand School sharks per year. The School Shark is a prodigious breeder, unlike most sharks that only produce 5-7 young per year; they would produce up to 20-30 per year, allowing them to keep the population up to good numbers. The whole industry collapsed when it was discovered that sharks, being the “end of the food chain” accumulated high levels of mercury, making it a health issue beyond our control.
Written by Dream Rider