ARTHUR’S ARCHIVE
Step back in time
“Like most fish, a shark is too good to catch only once”
IT WAS almost 50 years ago that Joyce Yallop made history when she landed a mako shark that weighed in, on official scales, at 500lb. It’s still the British record.
Mrs Yallop who, at the time, ran a tea stall on Norwich Market, was fishing with her husband – not using him as bait, that was mackerel – on board the famed Looe shark boat Lady Betty, captained by Alan Dingle, who sadly passed away a couple of months ago.
Mako sharks have never been prolific in UK waters and until Andy Griffith, fishing aboard Andrew Alsop’s White Water out of Milford Haven, released one in 2013, estimated at 194lb based on accurate measurements, none had been reported for over 40 years.
Mrs Yallop wasn’t the only shark-chasing lady angler. Daphne Case was the captor of the first shark entered into the records of the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain. To this day a trophy bearing her name is still awarded for the heaviest blue shark caught by a resident of Looe.
Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s shark fishing had its heyday in the UK, with Looe being the epicentre and blue sharks the target – although the occasional mako showed up too. Commercial fishing seemed to have put paid to that, but more have been seen in the past five years and two more have been landed since Andy Griffith’s capture.
Around the same time as Joyce made history, a thresher shark fishery became apparent in the English Channel around the Isle of Wight, with some experts suggesting that they had a breeding ground off the Kent coast.
Later into the 1980s and 1990s it was porbeagles making the news, with the North Cornwall coast producing huge specimens, and quite a few of them, with the fish feeding over shallow reefs less than half-a-mile from the cliffs.
In 1993 the current world record of 507lb was caught off the north coast of Scotland.
With modern, fast boats now plying their shark fishing trade, especially off the west coast of Wales and Cornwall, I think there is a very real possibility of record blue, mako and porbeagle sharks with specialist boats like White Water kitting out with serious tackle.
All that stops them is the insistence by both angler and skipper on catch-and-release. Like most fish, a shark is too good to catch only once.