Winter Time ...DUSKYS

Many of us only know of the fishery we have today in the wintertime consisting of the migratoty spinners and blacktips with the juvinile bulls mixed in that makes the evening news with those awesome ariel shots taken , but in reality this phemonon.... didnt always happen in the wintertime on my coast to this extent but during spring and early summer.summer was the best time for blacktips but things change and i seen a lot of things change in the 33 years since i started in this sport....my therory is the absents of these sharks that used to inhabit our waters back then....something else takes over and fills that void in nature...life goes on in a ever changing world that us changed for them...

In the 70's our wintertime fishery of sharks consisted of just about every shark that swam in the ocean from big tigers, massive hammers, reallt fat bulls the ocasional mako...and some sharks that arnt around today like the duskys and sandbars that was the most comman and most abundant in the colder water times on our coast. my first shark i caught was a sandbar in the winter and those sharks was like our spinners with the numbers and the duskys were the.... im going to say the longer of the sharks caught back then...pretty abundant like our lemons are today but seasonal as well. it was common pratice back then to kill these sharks and any givin weekend that we could get a ride or hitchhike out to the beach we could see up to 10 of these duskys over 10' on the beach with each shark group at diffrent spots....to be honest i thought i was pretty cool and thought that it wouldnt end, there was that many....

By the time i was old enuff to take what i learned from these old timmers and get set up like them even having there mentality on the sharks was a end of a era in a few short years after....with us living in a big comercial fishing towns at both inlets they fished these sharks to almost extention with nets and longlines by the early 80's and i rember in the late 80's where are all the sharks?....both winter and summer on our beaches, but if you can imagine the commercial boats that were out there was like our weekend warriors boaters are today.....i can rember all the sport boats by name going out my inlet , we had the "temtpress"..the "breakwater"...the "hooker and the happy hooker" and the "lucky two" with two party boats "miss ft. pierce and the blue seas".....and the only private boat that one big wig owned back then.....the rest was net boats.....fishing was a big money enterprise and was a major part of fla's industry back then...at one time in my life i longlined fished, needed a job hit the docks....and the money was great back then as well....

We never took pictures back then, what and why was the reason? beacause we were fishing for a set of jaws and why would you need a pic of a comman every day caught fish they were that many sharks guys....my how things have changed and now many of us that started fishing today are more aware of our fishery a lot more than when i started, the information age with the internet as well as some media ....but i was a diffrent time and a diffrent era and ive been lucky enuff to stick thru all of them still with the same fishing intensity but a diffrent mentality...i can rember the first shark i released for a reason not for conservation but ..."what am i going to do with this big thing?"...ive killed my fair share but i learned early on that catch and release came from me from that very satement...and that was rare back then...

Ive never wanted to post any shark pics with something dead or with blood in the pic's on the internet for many reasons one most inportant one was ridicule....but Will Fundora is doing a lot on preserving our rich history in our sport and its a inportant history something thats has to be shared with everyone that enjoys or takes part of or even looks at our culture of a sport. many of us like Will , jimbo and i have lived thru the decades and have a lot share with some great storys of the old days. Wills is digging up a lot of infromation on our history, has a lot of great hsitory like with Rene sharks and doing a lotta deep research on many guys just like us to tell storys and maybe share a few pics....my hats off to him and now with his site growing in deep root history ill share a few pics that i have that didnt get lost over the years....not the best of pics but every pic tells a story.....

a nice wintertime bull and a ok sized dusky....

we would catch 3-5 of these a day....very comman

jaws from a sandbar...the gatorade bottle dates the era...

the head of a dusky and me goofing around between bites....

me fighting a 400# dusky....this one was released...most def a exception back then...

i can honestly say i watched these sharks get smaller and then disapear....hmmm i wonder why..

i caught and gaffed this one while tracy went to 7-11 to get some hot coco...same fish as above

we always fished the 16/0's all year long back then.....there was a reason!...still wished i had those pics but maybe they will show back up just like these did!...i have a guy that has a pic of that 571#bull we caught came in the store last week ...but its up north.... at least i know one still exsit's...next blast from the past report....sea-ya mike