Thresher madness (6/18/16)

[JDTuna]

In all my years salt water fishing, I have caught* over a dozen species of sharks. However, I still had yet to check threshers off that list. Most of my NJ shark fishing trips had targeted makos, and I never really went out on a thresher-specific trip. So we decided to finally give them a shot on Saturday.

We got a late start, and after catching bait and running to the spot, we set up around 1145am. About 20 minutes later, the deep rod bends over. I grabbed the rod, and in about 15 minutes I had my first thresher shark alongside the boat. After a few quick pictures, we released the 130 to 150lb class fish.

Got set up again, and after another 15 minutes or so the deep rod started screaming. Unfortunately, a few minutes into the fight the middle of the haywire twist somehow kinked and broke. Never had that happen before.

Set back up, and the shallow rod begins to scream. Shortly into the fight, the side plate on the reel began to loosen, and we were rapidly losing drag pressure. Without the ability to fight the fish with the reel, I put on gloves and began to handline the shark to the boat. Within 30 to 40 min, I had the shark up on the surface about 20 feet from the boat. It was a nice 200lb+ class thresher. The fish dove again, and I decided to attempt to splice the line to another rod. While the splice was successful, the shark wrapped the line in the wheels and broke off. Not a big deal, was going to release the shark anyway (we release all the sharks we catch), though some more pictures would have been nice. Decided to call it a day after that. Definitely a very successful first thresher trip with three hookups, one release and one "Palm Beach" release lol.