Summer Time is Mako Time

On a recent fishing charter aboard Reelaction Fishing Charters, a lucky angler was going to get a bit more than he had bargained for.

With the weather looking a little less than promising, the boys got into a few drinks the night before, swapping fishing stories and generally looking forward to the following day. On this trip we had Steve, Dan, Ben, Eric, Jeremy,

The morning was overcast with a moderate easterly as we headed out of Marion Bay in search of some good table fish. Snapper, Nannygai, Whiting and anything else that was willing to jump on the hook was the target.

After about an hours run we had arrived at our destination, a good sized reef raising up from 75 meters to 45 – 30 meters in parts. The boys started pulling in good fish straight away. Snapper and Nannygai was the mainstay with a few Silver Trevally to add to the mix.

After a few hours we had a good feed when all of a sudden one of the boys were hooked up to something solid, taking line with little effort and then gone. After winding in we saw the hook had been cut of clean, a sure sign of something with teeth. Within the next 10 minutes we had another 3 hook ups all resulting in clean break offs and huge tangles, there was definitely something down there messing with us.

The next to hook up was Dan, this time he seemed to stay connected to this thing, maybe he had hooked in the corner of the mouth giving some protection from the teeth. After about 5 minutes of slugging this thing out on standard bottom bouncing gear, 30lb braid and a 15kg stick, it started making its way to the surface, we might get a look at what has been hassling us for the last hour or so. All of a sudden there was a huge splash on the surface, we all looked over to see what it was, then without any warning, a Mako came jumping straight out of the water, clearing its whole body length doing a complete somersault. Everyone was blown away, this mako was easily over 150kg and approximately 9 – 10 feet long. He continued to do another two jumps in total each fully out of the water doing cartwheels. On the third jump he managed to tangle up the line and bust of just as I was getting my video.

Needless to say this shark was the pinnacle of the day, especially for Dan who was holding the rod at the other end. Mako sharks are relatively common in our waters and can reach a massive 300kg – 400kg. They can turn up anywhere and anytime, all you need to do is to be prepared.