Shark Fishing with Kids

If you want to make a kid smile from ear to ear, just take them shark fishing. It doesn’t matter how big the sharks you catch are or what specific species they may be. The moment that kid sees the dorsal fin cutting the water he or she is guaranteed to shout out in delight. Plus, chumming for sharks is an extremely easy way to fish. Follow these five steps, and you’ll be seeing smiles in no time.

1. Rig up a 30-pound-class or heavier rods with a commercially sold shark rig, or a couple of feet of wire leader haywire-twisted to a 8/0 to 14/0 (depending on the size of the sharks in the area) circle hook.
2. Freeze or buy frozen blocks of chum, which you can hang over the side of the boat in a plastic bucket punched full of holes. You want enough chum flowing to make a steady stream behind the boat but not so much you’re actually feeding the sharks. The real key, however, is consistency – not volume. A little bit of chum goes a long way just as long as the flow is steady and uninterrupted.
3. Bait up with fish chunks or fillets sized appropriately for the size of the sharks in the area. Small sharpenose or bonnetheads will go after domino-sized baits, but spinners, dusky, bulls, and larger sharks will want a chunk of bait the size of a deck of cards.
4. Set lines both near the surface in the chum slick, and down deep on bottom. Lines near the top can be supported with floats set at varying distances.
5. When a bait gets hit, give the shark plenty of time to eat it before applying tension. Sharks tend to chew on their meal a lot longer than many other species and they rarely inhale a bait and then take off. A 10-count is not too long and often, it won’t be long enough.

Once you pull a shark up, naturally, you’ll want to make sure all the kids aboard are kept well away from its business end. “Safety first” goes without saying, but in the case of shark fishing it takes on a whole new importance.