sportsmanship

Sorry to hear that Eddie.Sometimes the fierce competitive nature of the shark fishermen will make them act in selfish ways but it's common usually among the younger testosterone driven males but not really something we like to see.I do recognize that there is respect even among competitors just a bit of jockeying for position.I will have a talk with the culprits and discourage any further such behaviour .

NOW CATCH SOME MONSTERS !!!!!

I have always hated begging for a rich guys trash. The best way to solve problems like that is catch your own bait. I take pride knowing every bait i put in the water was caught by me or my team. Just a few problems like that will discourage the guys from giving ya any bait at all. Start off with some gold hooks and climb the food chain all the way to the top. Everyone who asks me about how to get started shark fishing i tell them that ya need to learn how to catch bait first. Ya cant expect respect from a society that has none!

I have always hated begging for a rich guys trash. The best way to solve problems like that is catch your own bait. I take pride knowing every bait i put in the water was caught by me or my team. Just a few problems like that will discourage the guys from giving ya any bait at all. Start off with some gold hooks and climb the food chain all the way to the top. Everyone who asks me about how to get started shark fishing i tell them that ya need to learn how to catch bait first. Ya cant expect respect from a society that has none!

Great point Ernie that's right on the money and the way i learned to fish when I was a kid on the piers,,,,,gold hooks to shark hooks working your way up the food chain.Catch a pilchard,a sardine,a small blue runner or a herring put out catch a jack crevalle on the surf rod then freeline it on a 6/0 or 9/0 and hold on for dear life -you got yourself a big shark and you started with a gold hook.

What happens during these shark tournaments guys are trying to fish as much as possible and they are in a hurry to get to a spot before dark and they've worked all day or just got out of school and they don't have the time to go catch bait so they hit the docks hoping to buy a bonita, a cuda ,a jack or whatever.Many times they go dumpster diving for the carcasses which we usually get for free but even those are sometimes reserved for the crab trappers,the haitians or the asians that gladly pay for what we consider garbage to be thrown out.Getting bait can become the differnce between success and complete failure and teams must learn to designate who will be the bait runner on any given day and allocate responsibility to different team members so they can spread the work around.Not easy but the teams that work well together catch the best fish.Team Black Bart was the perfect example they worked together in there bait gathering and it showed --they usually kicked butt they were so well coordinated and organized.

I know that fresh bait is best but not a must. 70% of what i use has been in the freezer. Where i fish is a long way from any ports or docks so i have to drive 60 min out of the way for the rich mans trash. I have dumpster dove for bait also, but not often. I have 3 freezers, one huge chest one normal chest and a stand up freezer. All 3 are full of any thing ya can think of from bobo to big cowray to AJs and JCs. When the bonita are running, I bonita fish, when the rays are here i gig rays, when the jack crevell are here i fish for jacks. All the while i hord and save my bait and use it wisley. The only time i bumm bait is when a hurricane has knocked the power out to my freezers and everything is rotton. The last hurricane i had no power for 4 weeks. our spring is really hard to catch bait so i make shure my bait stocks are full by the winter. I hate using meatless fish heads. "I like meat" says the big fat shark.