TRIO OF THRESHER
Size Matters gets its seventh species weighing more than 100lb
Seventh species over 100lb for charter boat.
Anglers fishing a mammoth 96-hour charter trip caught a seventh species weighing more than 100lb for adventurous skipper Kevin McKie’s Size Matters. This time it was the rarely caught thresher sharks that graced the decks of the Merseyside skipper’s boat, which spends its summer working out of Plymouth, Devon.
Previously, the skipper has produced blue, porbeagle and six-gill sharks, common and white skate and bluefin tuna to more than 100lb.
Asked to recount the latest trip, skipper Kevin said: “I honestly don’t even know where to start. We are over the moon with the results of our latest adventure.”
Liverpool big-fish adventurer Phil Riley and two local friends, John Owen and Tony McQuillan, had booked Size Matters for a fourday charter, hoping to fish an area that is well beyond anywhere previously fished by any UK charter boats. Sadly, the weather was not in their favour, so it was time for Plan B – thresher sharks.
REAL CHALLENGE
On the first day the boat stayed only a few miles from shore off Plymouth at a mark that had produced a few porbeagle sharks. They failed to catch any sharks, but did top up their fresh bait supply before steaming through the night,
covering more than 100 miles, to reach an area they wanted to try for threshers.
“We all knew this was going to be a real challenge as none of us had ever seen a thresher before, let alone caught one,” said Kevin.
Five hours into the first day, there was a screaming run. “As soon as Phil set the drag, the fish went airborne. It was a thresher, estimated at around 200lb, and after about a 20-minute fight we had it to within 20 metres of the back of the boat, when it suddenly spat out the hook. We were all gutted.”
It puzzled the crew because normally a circle hook will take hold and stay there. Regular changes of hooks and bait were made, but there was no more interest from threshers, just lots of small tope to 20lb stealing their baits or trying to bite the chum bags at the side of the boat.
In darkness, when the three anglers were sleeping, skipper Kevin carried on fishing and experimented with all sorts of lights to see if they would attract threshers during darkness.
“They certainly looked good, but the tope loved them, especially the green ones,” he said.
MORNING RUSH
At first light, Kevin took the boat back to the area where they’d had the first run the day before. John Owen was on deck with the skipper, when, within five minutes, there was a short run on one of the rods. Kevin picked up the rod and started reeling in, at which point the rod buckled over and the fish swam off at speed, jumping 4ft clear of the water. It was a thresher.
“I was shouting at the other lads to wake up as I had no butt pad on and just flip-flops on my feet, and the fish was heading towards the bow of the boat,” said Kevin, who fought the fish for 30 minutes off the bow and eventually got it aboard.
An approved length-to-weight table revealed that Kevin had got his seventh species weighing more than 100lb. “Needless to say, I was well chuffed,” he said.
A few hours later, after another good run had been missed, Phil had another take and hooked into a fish that looked to be around 250lb.
Kevin said: “The fight was incredible, with the fish continually smashing through the surface for about 25 minutes. The hook-hold looked good and the fish was coming to the boat perfectly, when exactly the same thing happened, and it turned and spat the hook. Once again, we were left wondering what, if anything, we were doing wrong.”
From that point they adjusted their approach by tweaking the drag settings on the reels and using slightly smaller circle hooks. These proved effective when John hooked a thresher and boated it after a 40-minute battle. It was calculated to be about 150lb. Then it was Tony’s turn to take the next run, and it resulted in a
solid hook-up and a fish of around 60lb.
“By the time it was Phil’s turn on the rods again, we started to lose daylight, the tope moved in and the threshers disappeared,” said the skipper. “Sadly, it was now home time, and we steamed through the night back to Plymouth.”
HANDLE WITH CARE
All the sharks were handled with care using a Scottish National Heritage skate sling to lift each fish only 10 inches from sea level to the deck through the boat’s spacious transom door, all the time supporting the whole body.
Once aboard, the crew used buckets of water to keep the sharks wet, and released them as quickly as possible.
Size Matters is sponsored by tackle company Shimano, and has the company’s rods and reels on board. This time they used the Speed Master Dendou Maru 1000 20/30 rods teamed with Tiagra 30 reels.
“I must pay tribute to the crew,” said Kevin. “Phil, John and Tony made a tremendous team and were willing to gamble and take the opportunity to try something new. Once again it paid off for them.”
Now Kevin has his sights set on catching an eighth species in excess of 100lb from UK waters, and was due to head out in search of big conger eels within a week of finishing this amazing trip. ■