SHARK FEVER
Mark Crame’s ‘love affair’ with sharks.
Iwas 10 years old when I first saw sharks, the jawless carcasses of oceanic blacktips lying in a heap after a fishing competition in South Africa. After that I saw them swimming in the aquarium at Durban. Raggedtooth sharks principally. I was fascinated. I would sit enthralled watching ‘Blue Water, White Death’, the jaw-dropping 1971 documentary produced by Peter Gimbel and James Lipscomb.
Over and over I watched their journey through the South African whaling grounds and on to Dangerous Reef, South Australia, where they enlisted the aid of the famed Rodney Fox, the spear fisherman who survived a great white attack. I didn’t know the Summer of Love was happening, I was immersed in sharks.
Maybe I was a little in love with Valerie Taylor, who dived and filmed with her husband Ron in this and many other documentaries, but we won’t go there.
Besides, I was too busy reading the ‘Shark Attack File’, devouring the photographs in Jeremy Stafford-Deitsch’s book and building Quint’s boat from ‘Jaws’ out of Lego.
JAWS
I was still at primary school when I first watched ‘Jaws’. I saw it on ITV at 7.30pm, October 8, 1981, when it was watched by 23.3 million people, almost half the nation and the most watched programme of the year. I was only eight at the time. My mum kept her arm around me in case I got scared, which I did when she leapt in the air screaming as Ben Gardner’s head came through the hull while Hooper was extracting the tooth. You know the scene.
This was the JFK motorcade of my generation! Those films were blamed for the hatred and slaughter of sharks worldwide, apparently. I don’t buy that and actually believe they contributed to the championing of the species’ cause by bringing them out into the open to be protected. However, let’s remember that the slaughter of sharks in that era was acceptable.
I had a book, bought for pennies at a jumble sale. It was ‘Shark Hunter’ by Trevor Housby. It was fascinating, thrilling, and cemented my awe of these creatures. I read it again quite recently and was shocked at the writing, but really the most shocking aspect was the death of every shark caught, for no reason at all. Killed, then dumped. I’ve seen it happen in competitions too, in the 1980s and 1990s. What this book did leave me with, however, was the knowledge that we also had sharks right here in the UK. Now I’m grown up, I often catch some of them from my kayak and appreciate them all.
DOGS & HOUNDS
I love that first dogfish of the year. The humble lesser-spotted dogfish means it’s getting warmer, it means the rays and hounds and bass are just around the corner. The last doggie signifies the arrival of the cod – but that’s not the only reason I love them.
Up they come, a writhing pancake bagel that isn’t happy to be caught, with all the swagger and attitude and arrogance of every other shark but none of the power. Attacking my wrist with its sandpaper skin, tying itself into a knot on my trace and refusing to be straightened, curling up in a doughnut or staring me down with its amazingly beautiful, emerald eyes that Cleopatra could never have matched.
Lovely fish, doggies, often saving me from a blank and giving me a smile. I can honestly, hand on heart, say I’ve never felt they were a pest, and I get angered by people who kill them in spite. If you must, then at least eat them, they taste good. Any bait will do, any hook size, they’re yours for the taking.
Next up in the waters around Suffolk are the starry smoothhounds. Here is a shark as we know it. Another with beautiful eyes, rough skin and a mass of muscle. I just can’t get enough of catching these fish. It always starts with a pup with eyes bigger than its mouth attacking my cod baits. Then it’s time to change to whole squid or crab baits and target their parents, hunting in packs for anything on the bottom, favouring shrimps, prawns and crabs, hoovering up the lot.
A five-pounder on light gear is great sport, a double is a belter of a fish, and at 20lb you have a handful. Not to mention a double hook-up of larger fish on a kayak in tide... when they’re on, they’re on, and hound season is a fabulous time of year – a fine, sporting, beautiful fish in every way. Single or Pennell size 2/0 or 4/0 running leger rigs are my tackle of choice, baited with whole squid.
TOPE
Tope are the next on my radar. Now we’re getting serious, they’re even more sharky. Like a hound but with a longer nose, a bit translucent and proper serrated teeth instead of rough pads.
These get up to over 80lb, although the pack fish are usually in the twenties. They don’t pass close by to my local patch, though, and it means a bit of a trek to get to them, so I only target them when I’m away somewhere.
Half a dead fish or a whole, small live one on a size 8/0 single hook with a long, heavy mono trace of around 80-100lb is my preference because I’ve seen what wire does to sharks.
My first tope, which weighed about 20lb, was caught on a pollack somewhere off the west coast of Scotland. It gave me a fantastic fight. I had them again off the Gower, fishing a couple of miles out with mackerel baits. Many dropped runs, one that broke free when my braid bedded in and, finally, one on my lap. It was a marvellous bit of sport shared with my mate Shaun Leaver, who also had his first.
Spurdogs also appear locally, briefly in May about three miles or so offshore. It’s a mission to get to the bank they run through, and they are still a rarity, so targeting them is sporadic, to say the least.
They run to 20lb and remain one of my dream fish, eluding me to date – but who knows? ■