Well within sight of land, sharks have been everywhere off Sarasota this summer! My customers and I have been treated to lots of exciting action from the bigger ones this year, and these Sarasota visitors have surely experienced a vacation to remember. My best method has simply been anchoring upwind at the edge of a ledge or reef, then using the wind and anchor line to change our positioning until the action starts. With continuous chumming using tunny chunks, at least one shark and an occasional school have even shown up and camped around us. Hookups have been good from either the bottom or by free lining out from the stern 100 feet or so using a float on the surface. If a school has been feeding on top, we simply picked out a nice sized one, cast out a bait, and the customer got ready to hang on for his first run of several hundred feet or more. Some of the best fun is watching a family like the Schmidts from Indiana try to clear a path around the deck for their father, Bob Schmidt, who had to maneuver a bull shark over and under the anchor line and past my outboards as it circled my boat several times. On another trip, customer Dave Halek of Minnesota watched helplessly as what turned out to be a 9 foot lemon shark made several strong runs to hundreds of away from the boat during an hour long battle, which Dave finally won. In early July, we even jumped a very large hammerhead completely out of the water, which was something I've never seen before. Our recent action also included blacktips to 4 feet, lots of reef and sandbar sharks to 5 feet, and several nurse sharks that seem to always look bewildered when they reach the surface. For fish that cannot be de-hooked before release, it is important to always rig the end of your wire leader with a carbon steel hook (not stainless) that will rust out of their mouth in a few weeks. Baits that I use for shark fishing are mostly live blue runner and pinfish often caught by the kids onboard, who then become spectators watching their parents if we go to battle with a big fish.
Sharks deserve serious respect, so the summer months may not be the time to decide to snorkel or dive off Sarasota's reefs and ledges, in my opinion. Being inside of a boat and fishing are surely a lot safer, but expect to really run up the cost of replacing fishing tackle that gets damaged by sharks during these months. With the Gulf water temperature off Sarasota rising into the upper 80's in August, though, I'll be sorry to see so many of these great fish follow their food source away from us toward cooler water. It is so much fun while it lasts!
