Animals: Sharks

Ordinary mortals oppressed by the increasing number of big-game fishermen whose conversation about the niceties of taking sailfish, marlin, broadbill and tuna is lofty and arcane, should welcome a new book about catching huge fish by an author who neither prates of his own prowess nor rates all other quarry as paltry beside his own.* The quarry of Colonel Hugh D. Wise, U. S. Army retired, is sharks. He apologizes for this, admits that sharks are not generally eaten, do not leap when hooked and are not formally regarded as “game” fish. But they are “as strong as a mule and as hard to kill as a cat.” They are handier and less expensive for ordinary mortals to hunt than most big-game fish; they are more plentiful, and destructive to nicer fish.

Colonel Wise got started shark-fishing as a boy off the Virginia Capes, when he threw a weakfish out for a big Hammerhead shark and was towed around for miles in his dory. He learned to chum for the brutes with fresh-killed fish, preferably good oily and bloody ones. He learned how to cure a hooked shark of sulking on the bottom: send a lively crab down the line to pinch his nose.

After years of observation and checking up on shark stories. Colonel Wise testifies that there is no fixed answer to the old question whether sharks will attack men. They mostly will not if they are well fed, not excited, not convinced the man is helpless. They mostly will if given a blood scent or if startled by what they think is an attack on them. And different species, of course, have different appetites. Best rule, thinks Colonel Wise, is not to trust sharks.

Two expeditions to Andros Island by Colonel Wise, whose literary style is as unpretentious as his experting, were made perfect by E. M. Schuetz, resident manager in Nassau for National Fisheries Corp., a commercial sharking company, to whom prospective sharkers might well apply. Gleeful was his reply to an angler returning home on the S. S. Munargo with boasts about the big barracuda he had caught. Colonel Wise could truthfully say: “We used them for bait.” His biggest catch at Andros was a Great Blue shark that measured 11 ft. 7 in., weighed 954 lb. But far bigger ones, of course, got away, by getting into coral caves or snapping the heaviest lines.

Between seasons Colonel Wise once tested, and later compared with a shark’s, the pull that a man can exert swimming against rod & reel. His figures for a 6 ft. 3 in. Princeton water poloist harnessed, and for young male Sand sharks of the same weight (200 lb.) hooked in the mouth:

Man Shark

Surges 94 lb. 96 lb.

Steady 60 lb. 34 lb.

* TIGERS OF THE SEA—Colonel Hugh D. Wise —Derrydale Press ($10).