Spotted Gully Sharks (Spotties) and Smoothhounds (White Spotties) - Part 1

The Marine with a Smoothhound (its not a dog though) AKA White Spottie at the Reefs

Spotted gully sharks or spotties and Smoothhound sharks, are hard fighting little machines, they dont grow as large as bronzies and raggies, and other sharks, but what they lack in size they make up in strength.

These machines have been known to pull guys off rocks while trying to land them, with their famous rolls that they do when landing them.

Me with my first Smoothhound, caught at Mnandi along the False Bay Coast.

They are found as their name implies, in gullys, and also around reefs. A spot where these little machines are targetted is the Strand Reefs, as seen above in the first picture, that one was caught by that mal (mal = mad a South African term) oke Dean the Marine. Another good spot to target these spotties is at Mnandi where i have caught a few of these guys, seen above and below. We will go into more detail on how to catch these machines at later stage, so stay tuned.

Ragged Tooth Sharks (Raggies) - Part 1

Dinos Raggie

Ragged Tooth Sharks are another species of shark caught by shore anglers, and are also targeted by competitive anglers. These sharks don't fight as hard as bronzies, the fight is much slower, as these are heavy lazy sharks, they are basically the fat lazy sh*ts in the shark family. They just wanna chow a bait and lay around, so you the angler basically just have to pull this oke out the water, sometimes i dont even think these okes know that they are actually hooked and just go along with the flow.

Thys Kemp jnr. with his raggie

Catches of these sharks over 200kgs are more common than that of bronze whalers over 200kgs as they are a lot easier to land, bronzies over 200kgs aren't easily landed and are more elusive.

Fighting these sharks doesn't usually last more than an hour even for the larger raggies, as they are lazy as previously stated. However these sharks do have the nasty habit of turning around on you while trying to put them back in the ocean, or while a buddy is trying to get it out for you. This isn't uncommon, unlike a bronzie which cannot turn all the way around, these fat sh*ts can, so be very weary when handling these guys. Below is what happened to a kid from Pletternberg Bay in the Southern Cape, when he was handling a raggie by the tail.

When good times go bad
(http://www.sealine.co.za/view_topic.php?id=27084&forum_id=1&page=1)

We will go into more detail about these fish, how to target them and where to find them.

Bronze Whaler Sharks (Bronzies) - Part 1

Me with my first bronzie, 69kg

The Bronze Whaler/Copper shark is a species of shark that is targeted along the Falsebay coast by many anglers, but mainly buy competitive league anglers. These sharks put up a massive fight, lasting anywhere from 15min to 2 hours +, and are very difficult to land.

These sharks are caught from the shore purely for sport, and aren't kept, but returned to the ocean to live to fight another day.

In competition points are awarded per kilo, thus bronzies (bronze whalers), are the main focus of most competition anglers on the day, as catches of 100kgs + are a regular occurrence.

These sharks can grow to over 300kgs, the current record for a bronze whaler caught from the shore is held by Greg Kellermann of Two Oceans AC, with a bronzie of 2.50m which is 227kgs.

Greg Kellermann with his record breaker 227kg Bronzie

This record was close to being beaten recently by angler of Tygerberg Rock and Surf AC, Dion Van Zyl with his 2.49m bronzie of 224kgs caught on the 3 October 2009.

These make no mistake, these fish put man and his tackle under tremendous pressure, and is very testing, with the shark winning the battle more times than none.

Dion Van Zyl with his 224kg bronzie (www.probait.co.za)

At a later stage i'll go into more detail on how to target these beautiful machines of nature.

Dean The Marine Part 1

Dean The Marine, a mate of mine is currently a member of the Western Province A side. We fish for the same club, Two Oceans AC, and is one of the best anglers on the WPSAA scene at the moment. He is known for his craziness (also known as jussness a South African term), and for jumping off harbour walls (he's juss) into the sea to chase fish.

Other than that, this guy knows his eish (a dirivitive of sh*t), and knows where the fish are and how to land them.

We'll be giving you updates on his fishing endeavors in the future. He will be giving tips in the future, ranging from bait presentation to what to tackle is best and so on for any/new fisherman. So watch closely.