Morning journal and courier., 1881-06-18
Fishing for Sharks.

s'Talk about shaEks :" 8 veteran fisherman ] said, striking savage blow with the tiller ! at the first of the season that came up with 8 long dght '1why, can get fishing enough 1 right off Fort Hamilton here Yes, shark 1 fishing pays, and it's great sport for green hand. The business is carried on principally 1 for the oil and fins. A big place for them is l In the White Sea, and again in Iceland The sharks they get are from thirty to fifty feet ! long, and the largest weighs from 2,5Oo to l 5000 pounds.
 They harpoon them, and sometimes big one will tow boat all day before you can l get near 1t. Some people call them baskinp sharks, from their habit of sleeping on the l top of the water. but they are best known as [ bone sharks. I heard of one that towed top-sail schooner of hundred tons with all sails set, against a gale of wind for three hours. Sometimes they in around the Grand Banks and get caught About four barrels of oil IS the average from good sized fellow. In London, some years ago a show man made good deal of money showing what he called sea serpent, but one of the British Museum men came in one day, and said the seq serpent was big shark and so it was, too. The snowman had been a sailor once, and seen them at the fisheries in the Orkney Islands so he bought the back bones of two and put them together some- how, and then called it a snake and long one 1t was, over ninety feet, I believe. My shark fshiug was all done near Smyrna, Florida. Some sharks would give half barrel of oil, but they were generally under fifteen feet We sold the skin for lit tie or nothing, and good many backbones were sold for canes Run a steel rod into them, and they take a fine polish These and the jaws were often sold to tourists who came over to catch shark. and they'd carry them home with lem as trophies Some of 'em who would catch shark all alone got more than they bargained for, for we usually hired fifteen or twenty darkies to do the pull ing and hauling and camped out during the months of July, August and September, nov ing up and down whenever the biting was poor.
 'tWe carried our pots and things along and fried out the flyers and shipped the oil by a smack up to Fernandina, where it was all bought by one man. I don't know what he did with it. Some said he sold it for cod liver oil. We used regular hook and line, only it was rope, and the hook was foot long and made fast to the line by three foot chain. Fish bait was the best-sea trout. something like our steak fish. We kept above twenty of these lines over all the time at regular distances along the beach, wher- ever the water deepened quick from the shore. All the lines were about fifty yards long, and. alter they were thrown out, they were caught round stick; so when one of these sticks went down we knew there was bite, and three men would take the line.
 
 sharks bite as softly at first as small fish It's exciting sport, if you don't have too much of it. You must have about fifty feet of slack, and when you feel the line shake and quiver like, you want to slack out Sometimes they fool over the bait, but generally a big sharbwin nsssst once twice, and then pick it up and move off, swallowing the bait 1t goes You want to give him about tif- teen feet of rope, and then take brace, and when he hauls the line taut all jerk togeth- CT. Then the work commences-fun, some people call it. As soon as he feels the hook he makes big rush that will often start ten or fifteen men, and Pve seen five jerked right into the water on the start Up and down he goes, sometimes jumping into the air and trying to shake out the hook, and some old fellows will swim right for you and try to bite the line.
 'I remember one young fellow-he called himself an athlete-who came down from Jacksonville on purpose to go sharking, and he let it out that he could catch the big gest shark single-handed. You bet we gave him the chance. He had line all to himself baited with shad and we stood around to see the fun. He had the slack all coiled up, and let it run for about ten feet and then braced his feet in the sand about three feet from the water; as the line tautened he gave jerk that would have started a bull, and the next thing we saw was mans heels and legs fly ing in the air. He landed all in heap half in the water, and off went the fish, the line tearing out like greased lightning.
 ''He looked rather cheap as he pulled him self together, but he grabbed the line again, and the next thing he knew he was going out to sea- and had to let go or drown. By the time he got in the line was all out and the shark was rushing up and down like mad. The young fellow game though. He hauled away, now getting in foot, and then the shark would jerk him his face in the sand; and after he had swallowed about pint of it and had his arms nearly ierked out, he concluded that man-eater too much for one man, and gave it up. We laid on then and ran the fish ashore. He measured four teen feet, and it took eight of us to get him in. The young fellow took the jaw, asa he said It had eight rows of teeth, and just fitted over his shoulders