thresher shark fishing in Santa Monica Bay

C

C-Pup16 in Los Angeles

New member
California is great. I was catching one thresher shark after another in a drift off of Malibu north of Pepperdine Univ. in sight of bikini clad surfer girls and kayakers! Great entertainment for an old guy like me!
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OK, What do you do with the Thrasher sharks? If you bleed them and eat the meat right away, they are OK, but if you freeze the meat, or wait a couple of days, the amonia is too strong to be good eating.
 
I froze many individually wrapped thresher steaks the evening of the day I caught it and have defrosted and consumed four for dinners since then. They taste fine. No amonia. The thresher is a beautiful fish and fine to eat. I caught and released 7 or 8 small ones before the 65 pound catch I kept on my final drift. Four foot, nose to base of tail. I'll be fishing catch and release for threshers when I return to it, maybe keeping one per year. These small sharks were in 50 ft of water not far from shore. Every one went airborn as soon as hooked, then dove and gave a fiesty fight. The bigger threshers are caught on the drop off of the shelf in deeper water, or over deep water high points. Larry at MDR's gas dock has photos of monsters he caught near where I was, but much deeper. You won't find me deep water fishing for big sharks, at least in C-Pup16.

I did not bleed him either. I was a guest on another boat and did not want to bloody up his deck too much. We gutted and quartered the shark when we got in to the dock... maybe 1 hour after it was caught. Then I took two hours to cut the slabs into steaks at home. Boy shark skin is tough!

I have a photo but can not upload it to my C-Pup album here. Can't figure out why. Any ideas? Should I log off and log on again, or maybe request a new password? ...or is my album too full? If the latter, then can I start a second album? How do I insert a photo to a message like this?

Keith
 
The album isn't too full and if you're able to post a message with your username, you're logged in and shouldn't need a new password. Most likely the image itself is too large or the wrong format. You probably need to resize it on your computer prior to uploading. Whatever software you use for you computer's photo album should allow you to re-size and "save as" a jpg image.
 
I'm going to try to explain this ammonia thing a bit, just so everyone knows what's happening.

First, all living things, particulary animals with their muscle tissues and such, are made up of proteins.

Proteins in tissues that are old or no longer needed are broken down into urea by the body and transported by the blood and excreted in renal glands, such as, or similar to our kidneys.

Bleeding a fish eliminates the urea in it's blood.

Putting the fish on ice cools down the muscle and other tissue to stop any further protein/urea conversion.

All animals have organisms living within them, including fish and other creatures. This includes some bacteria capable of converting urea to ammonia.

If you don't cool your fish quickly enough or fully, the bacteria in the muscles and elsewhere change urea to ammonia and ruin the taste and smell.

Some types of fish, shellfish, and crustaceans (crabs, shrimp, lobsters, etc.) have higher concentrations of bacteria in them because they are scavengers and eat other dead animals. These guys therefore spoil more quickly than the rest, but all fish, shellfish, and crustaceans will spoil sooner or later, unless frozen, or cooked and canned (sterilized).

Hope this is useful in understanding what's going on with your catch!

Now for some crab cocktail!

Joe. :smilep
 
...had to turn off my anti-virus software to upload the photo.

If my thresher steaks begin tasting like ammonia, I'll use them to clean the kitchen floor. That's a good reason to do catch and release. I rigged a closet pole with a boat line snap at the end to use to release toothy fish. Insert the leader, run the metal line snap down to the hook and pop it out.

I know that in the Pacific N.W., the thresher shark I caught is too small to be something to boast about. You cold water PNWers also encounter monster size great whites that are rare along my coast in SoCal. (Small ones aren't but big ones are.) In 1996, two kayakers were killed by a shark, presumably a great white, in Paradise Cove Malibu near where I was fishing. I was about to buy a kayak at the time, but cooled to that and years later bought C-Pup16 as my first boat.

All that said... I didn't catch the 65 lb thresher on C-Pup, but on a friend's 21 ft Blackman center consul.
 
To add to Joe's information on fish, Sharks contain much greater concentrations of Urea than other fish: The following explaination of the physiology is given at web site on Shark biology:
"sharks routinely retain bodily concentrations of urea that would kill most other vertebrates. This is largely due to the presence of even higher bodily concentrations of TMAO, which counters the protein-de-stabilizing effects of urea. Together, urea and TMAO add substantially to a shark's osmotic pressure, effectively rendering the internal fluids slightly (about 5%) 'saltier' than the external environment. As a result, sharks do not need to invest any metabolic effort toward obtaining the water their bodies need. A constant supply of fresh water osmoses passively into a shark's body through the gills and other exposed membranes." Of course information like this may only be of interest to those of us who are Nephrologists.." TMAO is a toxin and in some sharks (Greenland) is responsiable for multiple deaths of mamals.

Because of this greater concentration of urea, the chance of ammonia formation and spoilage of the meat is greater in the shark than other fish.
Bleeding will help, but freezing will help stop the conversion of urea to ammonia. We strongly advise against eating fish which smell like ammonia. Our personal experience is that fresh shark is great--refigerated shark is not. If you can flash freeze it, it is OK--sometimes...

I have no problem with shark fishing as long as the meat is eaten. Otherwise I favor catch and release.
 
Hi Jeff! You bet! Lets hoop net some bug bugs this year! You shark lovers... I do release them. See my home made release pole in my photo album. I caught 9 threshers and kept one for show and meals. Ate more of it for dinner tonight 1.5 weeks after freezing and it still tastes great. I also don't fish for makos. Besides not wanting them to attack C-Pup, they're the only predator for seals. I do not believe thresher sharks eat seals until they get really huge, and even then probably not.
 
From a shark source:
Any shark to be used as food should be cleaned immediately. If the blood is not drained from the system right away, the urea deteriorates into ammonia and results in the pungent odor and dry taste characteristic of poorly handled shark meat.

So, don't just throw your shark on ice at the dock like you would other fish. Instead, follow these tips for cleaning your shark:

After gutting, dunk the shark in water to wash out as much blood as possible


Put the shark on ice


At the dock, cut the shark's head all the way around and make a cut from the head to the tail on both the top and bottom sides


Using a pair of pliers in one hand and holding the head and tail in the other, skin the shark


Then cut the head and tail off, remove the underlying layer of dark meat, and cut the shark into filets


Wash thoroughly and package the shark for freezing or cooking as you would any other fish.
 
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