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Slick Feeders Sharks & Sea Birds
When fish migrating up from warmer southerly seas decide to enter British waters, they invariably do so via the western approaches to the English Channel. So their first potential point of contact with anglers is often the Scilly Isles out in the open Atlantic 28 miles off Lands End. Many migrants including birds, mammals, and good numbers of Blue Sharks regularly approach or pass close by the Scillies. Catching a few blues's was my primary intention during a recent stay on the main island in the group, St. Mary's. But to get at them, I had to team up with a party whose interests in going afloat were very much different to mine.

Over the past 10 years, shark fishing around the Scilly Isles has evolved into something that bears no resemblance to the way I remember it when I was last there over 20 years ago. The requisite 40 fathoms of water favoured by these fish can be found within a few miles of the shore around the outer edge of the island group. Deep water, and their unique geographical position out in the open ocean, has also earned the Scillies a well deserved reputation as one of the top ocean going sea bird watching venues in the country, something the twitchers can thank shark anglers for.

It all started back in 1996 when someone with some bird identificational knowledge out on a sharking trip reported sighting an extremely rare Fea's Petrel feeding in the rubby dubby slick. It wasn't long before bird watchers were asking anglers if they could tag along on trips as fare paying passengers, leading to a sudden explosion in rare bird reports. Very soon the birders were booking the boats for themselves and setting up their own rubby dubby slicks. Now it's the shark anglers who are tagging along as fare paying extras, which is exactly what I did with a group of local sea bird study fanatics who I got to know quite well over the week I was there.

These dual interest trips work very well. But if I wanted to be picky, full days at sea instead of 5 hour evening trips would greatly increase the potential for more sharks. This isn't really the fault of the birders who will also put in full days. The main problem is that most things coming into the islands arrives by ferry and is ultimately distributed by a flotilla of smaller boats to the outlying islands. So the boats used for fishing and birding in the evenings often have day jobs too. So heavy is the islands reliance on boats for everything that even the local ambulance is a boat. But one thing that is at the discretion of the birders is whether or not the trip goes ahead in heavy weather. They are willing to go out in conditions that many anglers would shy away from. The windier the weather, the better they like it.

A good onshore blow can push open oceanic birds closer to shore. It also pushes a drifting boat along at quite a lick creating a much longer rubby dubby slick which is good for both birds and sharks. Blue sharks are open oceanic wanderers which, while they might can give the impression of living in groups is not really the case as they are not particularly gregarious by nature. What happens is that they stumble into the slick then follow the concentration back to source. Unfortunately, sharks are not as quick over the ground as birds. So if one finds the slick at its furthest extremity, or late on in the drift, it might not reach the boat and baits before its time to up sticks and head for home on a 5 hour evening trip. Full day trips, if you can get them, can be disproportionately more productive.

Typically, the weather was blistering and breathless right up to the afternoon of my first trip. Then it started blowing south westerly five's and sixes, and never stopped until after I had gone. Not that it matters much in terms of safety and comfort. The two boats offering these 'pelagic' trips - Kingfisher skippered by Alec Hicks, and Sapphire skippered by Joe Pender, rate amongst the best sea boats I have fished from in many a long time. Both are 50 foot Kingfishers with so much freeboard you have to stand on the seats to fish. The fishing well is big enough to easily accommodate twelve anglers along each side. Except they won't be fishing twelve. In most cases they wont even by fishing half that number. And with the birders lined up along the opposite side to the rods, you have so much room to fish that its hard to take in.

Petrels feeding in the slick
Blue Shark action

Blue sharks normally arrive off the Scillies in good numbers around early July, staying on well into September as they don't appear to like sea temperatures below around 16 degree's celcius. But they will be well spread about the place and will need to be attracted to the boat to be in with any real chance of success. They key to this is rubby dubby. The more chum going in the better. Its vital to to get a good, well fed, un-broken slick going, both for the fish as well as the birds. Blue sharks are what is known as pelagic fish which means they spend their lives in the upper layers of the water as opposed to feeding at the bottom. So other than food, there are no features likely to concentrate them, hence the need to draw as many as possible in to the boat and of course the baits which are waiting for them in the slick.

Rubby dubby as a concept is simple. In practise however it can be anything but. A lot of thinking has gone in to the most productive way of setting up a slick. What you don't want is particles of uniform size as these will all act in the same way. Equally, liquids such as blood and fish oil on their own are not much use as they tend to stay close to the surface. The secret is a mix of all these things. Smashed up mackerel left to soften for a few days are one ingredient. Fresh mackerel put through a chum grinder adds another dimension. Fish oil and fish juices are also used along with mashed up pollack livers which are good for drawing in the birds. Some of the birders also bring along bread soaked in fish oil. A word of warning though. The smell of some of this stuff coupled to the boat wallowing on a long beam on drift is not for the feint hearted, and there were victims on every trip.

A good rubby dubby slick is a long three dimensional trail looking to intercept fish at whatever level they may be feeding at, so the baits must also be put out with this in mind. Mackerel flappers on 12/0 hooks to 16 feet of heavy wire form the business end of the tackle. Circle hooks are preferred as these lead to more mouth hooking of fish and obviously, less potential for actual or stress related damage. What happens is that the baits are suspended under balloons at different depths, usually between 60 and 20 feet, with the deepest baits furthest from the boat. Sharks moving up the slick can do so at any depth. But what they invariably do is start moving up in the water column as they get near to the boat, as that is where the chum concentration will lead them, back to source which is one of maybe six mesh bags suspended just under the waters surface.

All tackle used on these trips, including the mackerel rods, is supplied on the boats. But to avoid any confusion as to which rod might be allocated to who after either Joe or Alec has set them out, it is important first to ask. Better still, take your own tackle. The gear they provide on board is all quality stuff. Most of the reels were Shimano TLD25's and the rods 30 pound class from Conoflex. I took along my Shimano Exage 4 piece travel rod and TLD25 which happened to have 40 pound bs braid on it from previous skate fishing trips. Reels on the boat tend to come loaded with 50 pounds mono which is understandable when you consider that anyone can come along, including novices, and use them. But when bringing your own tackle, you can scale down much further than any of this. After all, a blue shark is not that far removed from being a big blue tope, and 60 pound tope are regularly boated on light uptide outfits.

Alec Hicks disgorging shark
Rubby Dubby bag

The average size, and indeed average numbers of blue sharks taken these days has declined markedly in recent times, in the main due to increased commercial pressure. When I last fished the Scillies in the early 1980's we had 17 sharks on one day. Now half a dozen would be a respectable haul for a full day afloat, with fish in the 30 to 60 pound bracket being the norm. Bigger fish are still on the cards, with both skippers having had ton up fish recently (Alec 120 lbs & Joe 117 lbs). But pressure from both UK as well as Spanish commercial boats is taking its toll, particularly the practise of attaching baited hooks to dan buoys used to mark or support the ends of nets. There is talk of bringing in a range of protective legislation for sharks generally as they are officially listed amongst the most endangered animals on the planet, the main UK pressure group being SOS (Save Our Sharks) - see www.save-our-sharks.org

Shark fishing most definitely is a waiting game. And the longer you wait, the better your chances of success. So don't be surprised to see all the evenings action compressed into the last hour. Equally, don't be too surprised either by an early fish that enters the slick close to the boat as soon as it is set up. I had one with Alec well inside the first hour. At the other extreme, we had one take just as the lines were coming in ready to head for home. So having other people on board with different interests to you can make for a welcome distraction, particularly when they are so enthusiastic and willing to explain at great length everything you could ever want to know about ocean going sea birds. To me, offshore sea birds come in three types - gulls, big black things, and little black things. But now I can put real names to a few such as storm petrels, shearwaters and skua's. But when the really tasty stuff starts feeding in the slick, of which there were several examples, I was totally lost.

Preparing Rubby Dubby
Birds and sharks are not the only animals to enter the slick and track it back to the boat. Chum slicks can attract good numbers of garfish which make for good sport on a light float rig. Sunfish, turtles, whales and dolphins are also regularly seen, though possibly not attracted by the slick. We had a sunfish come by on one of the evenings. On top of this, if the tide isn't too big and the wind isn't pushing the boat along too quickly, putting baits down on the bottom can be a good way of occupying yourself while waiting for the sharks. Depending on the type of ground obviously, pollack, ling, spurdog, whiting, haddock and even megrims have been brought aboard. If you are intent on giving the bottom fishing a try, load up with braid as you are likely to be fishing in at least 90 metres of water.

Both Joe and Alec are heavily involved in shark tagging schemes, interestingly, run by different organisations. Alec works in with the long established Shark Angling Club of Great Britain, whereas Joe tags for Dr. Ken Collins at the Southampton Oceanographic Centre who has taken over where Sue & Geri Drake left off when they moved to Africa recently. Joe brought up a positional distribution of recovered tags on his GPS plotter which, when presented like this, very clearly shows a pattern. Most tags are recovered by commercial boats, sometimes working hundreds of miles from base. This recapture pattern suggests a migration back down to the Biscay area at the end of the summer, then across the Atlantic to the eastern seaboard of the United States. Shark data recording has also shown that 90% of all blue sharks taken in UK waters are female fish, with the majority of the males over on the other side of the pond along the American coast, hence the attraction in UK fish making the long trip. This is supported by the recapture of one of Alec's fish off the coast of Boston USA.

SKIPPERS DETAILS

Alec Hicks (Kingfisher) Tel. 01720 422271
Joe Pender (Sapphire) Tel. 01720 422751

Both have boards on the harbour jetty giving details of proposed pelagic trips which you can just turn up for on the day. But if it's full day trips that are required, these can be arranged providing there is a full party to take the boat. Alternatively, try Martin Jenkins Tel. 01720 422251 who probably has more all day availability.