Want a Big-Game Fishing Thrill? Try Thresher Sharks

One fisherman calls them a poor man’s big-game fish. Some call them swiveltail sharks. Some restaurants have been known to illegally call them swordfish on menus.

Ichthyologists, people who study fish, call them alopias vulpinus, but almost everyone else mispronounces their common name, thresher sharks, by calling them thrasher sharks.

What they really are, by nearly all accounts, is fun to catch. And right now, fishing for big threshers in Santa Monica Bay is as good as it gets, according to some thresher aficionados.

In recent weeks, thresher shark fishermen report an abundance of jumbo threshers, some of several hundred pounds. Bill Beebe, outdoor writer for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook and a longtime thresher fisherman, says you don’t need to break your bank account to rig up for thresher fishing.

“You don’t need a big boat, you don’t need expensive gear, and you don’t have to go far to catch them,” he said.

“To me, it’s every bit as exciting as marlin fishing. In fact, I rate threshers better fighters than marlin. I’ve seen them jump out of the water 12 and 15 feet. And as a food fish, you can’t beat it. It tastes just like swordfish. When my neighbors hear I’ve got a freezer full of thresher steaks, I’m a pretty popular guy on my block.

“You don’t even need expensive lures to catch threshers. They’ll hit an anchovy, alive or dead, as well as anything. They’ll also take small mackerel or bonito, too. It’s certainly more exciting than fishing for marlin--there’re no long hours of trolling.

“You simply put your boat in an area where you think some threshers might be around--they’re almost always caught in off-color water, rarely in blue water--and either use a very slow troll or drift with a bait in the water.

“I’ve probably caught two dozen in the last 10 years. The average might be 90 to 110 pounds. If there’re threshers around and you have anchovies, you’ve got a good shot. They’re almost always found near anchovies. They whack them with that big tail, stun them, and eat them.”

For those unfamiliar with threshers, or those who grow faint at heart at the mere mention of sharks, not to worry. Their tails are probably more dangerous than their teeth.

Said Beebe: “A 500-pound thresher might have teeth only three-eighths or half an inch long. I wouldn’t put my foot or my hand in their mouth, but they’re not really all that dangerous.”

A thresher has a tail that looks like a scythe. The upper lobe of the tail fork is as long as its body. The largest thresher ever taken on rod and reel weighed 802 pounds, but commercial fishermen have caught threshers weighing more than 1,000 pounds in nets. Five of the 14 line-class world record threshers have been caught in Santa Monica Bay, another off Newport Beach. Still another is listed as having been caught in “Catalina Channel.”

Here is how several thresher fishermen describe their recent catches, and thresher fishing in general:

DON McPHERSON, 42, IBM executive, Marina del Rey--”I’ve fished seriously for threshers for the last six years. I’ve caught about a hundred. I usually find them in Santa Monica Bay in April and May, so this run of fish is uncommon. And I’ve never heard of threshers this big in the bay.

“It used to be that anything over 500 pounds was caught out by the shipping lanes. But now, we’re seeing catches of much bigger threshers in the bay.

“It could be that threshers are around more frequently than anyone believes, because in June or July, most saltwater fishermen I know are out fishing for tuna or marlin. But when we hear the commercial (fishermen) guys are getting them, we know they’re around.

“Saturday morning, I had one on that was easily 250 pounds. I was fishing by myself on my 17-foot Boston Whaler, Scout. I hadn’t had the mackerel bait in the water two minutes, on my 50-pound-test rig. In fact, I was still baiting up my other rig, a 12-pound-test outfit. I was doing a very slow troll, slipping in and out of gear, maybe doing one knot. I was five miles out of Marina del Rey.

“The reel started screaming, and the thresher came out of the water almost immediately. He came straight for the boat, jumped again several feet clear of the water and came down on the line and broke that 50-pound test like it was nothing.

“That lasted about two minutes.

“Right after that, the 12-pound rig’s reel started screaming. I had that mackerel down about 60 feet, with a four-ounce sinker. I had five feet of 90-pound test wire leader to the hook, five feet of 150-pound-test monofilament leader and then my 12-pound Dacron line.

“Funny thing, I never saw this fish for the next two hours. Most of them jump a lot when they’re hooked, but not this one. I had a light drag on him, and I’m not even sure he knew he was hooked for the first hour. But when I got him to color, I could see he was of decent size, big enough so that I needed help with the gaff.

“I put out a help call on the radio, and Larry Derr, who was fishing on a 20-foot Skipjack nearby, came by to help. This was an untypical fish, in that he never came up. Four times I thought I was getting him to gaff range, and each time he took off.

“I’d say he took me around the boat 150 times in two hours. Trying to handle him and run the boat, well, it was right out of Laurel and Hardy.

“I weighed him at 122 pounds. On 12-pound, it was a lot of fun. The bulk of this run of fish, I’d say, runs from 60 to 140 pounds. I hear the gill netters out of Ventura and Oxnard are getting 400- and 500-pounders.

“As a fighter, I’d rate big threshers ahead of striped marlin. In the 100- to 150-pound class, maybe it’s a dead heat. But anything over 150 pounds, I give it to threshers.

“Usually, I tag and release them. I’ve tagged as many as five in one day. But this one I killed, because I’m out of thresher steaks. I like to cut thresher into inch-and-a-half steaks, marinate them in Italian salad dressing and do a quick barbecue on each side. It’s delicious.”

LARRY DERR, 30, Commercial fisherman, Playa del Rey--”I catch thresher and bonito sharks for a living. I love it. You know what the best part of my job is? It’s bringing my boat back into the marina, after a successful day of fishing, and listening to the freeway traffic reports on the radio.

“I’ve fished commercially, with rod and reel, for threshers and bonitos (also known as mako sharks) for the last five years. When sharks are out there, I fish five days a week.

“I could use gill nets, but I don’t believe in them. Gill nets kill too many untargeted fish, for one thing. And you wouldn’t believe the numbers of pups (young thresher sharks in the 20-pound class.) those gill netters kill. That’s wrong.

“Besides, it’s more fun and less expensive to fish with rod and reel. If I did something else for a living, I’d still go thresher fishing as much as I could.

“I’ve caught threshers to 260 pounds. In a normal year, I catch more bonito sharks. The threshers show up in April and generally leave in June, when the water warms up. And that’s when bonito sharks show up.

“You hear a lot of stories about restaurants serving thresher and calling it swordfish. I haven’t heard of that happening for a long time in Southern California. For one thing, thresher isn’t cheap, like it used to be. I’m getting anywhere from $1.45 to $3 a pound. Swordfish is around $3.60 and dropping.

“In a way, for a sport fisherman, a thresher is tougher to land than a marlin. See, he can snap your line with that big tail. If he’s near your boat and you don’t have a tight line on him, you’re in trouble. Most sport guys use 10 feet or so of wire or heavy mono leader. Since I do it for a living, I use anywhere from 15 to 30 feet of combo mono and wire.

“A big thresher is a powerhouse--a really tough, challenging fish. And what a tail! It’s fun to watch them below your boat, circling a ball of anchovies. They’ll start to get excited, make closer, tighter circles and . . . whack! They’ll kill hundreds of anchovies with one whack of that tail, then they’ll move in slowly and suck every one of ‘em up.

“I’ve seen them knock my mackerel and wire leader right out of the water with that tail. Usually, I see them first. I’ll tease a thresher with my bait. I’ll let him whack the bait, then I’ll go into free spool and let it sink, like he’s killed it.

“I watched a 200-pounder do that three weekends ago, right under the boat. Nothing happened. I reeled in slowly. He’d broken a live mackerel in two with that tail. I put another bait on quickly, took it down and this time I got him.

“I caught that fish in one of the steamer lanes. That’s where you find the bigger threshers. The ones you catch in deeper water tend not to jump much. They jump more in shallow water, like in Santa Monica Bay.

“Sportfishermen can find threshers anywhere where you have anchovies and murky water. I think they like the cover of murky water to sneak up on anchovies.”

BILL SHINBANE, 49, owner of a shrimp processing business, Encino--”I caught a 540-pound thresher off Catalina in 1979, trolling for marlin with live bait. It’s still one of the four or five largest fish ever taken in California waters. His tail alone was over 10 feet long.

“I’ve never heard of a thresher striking a marlin lure, but I’ve heard of them getting tail-hooked on marlin lures.

“I’ve fished for threshers the past 10 years. The thing I like about it is you don’t have to go far. I mean, how far away is Santa Monica Bay? On my boat, I’ve been hooked up to four or five threshers that I’m sure were over 300 pounds.

“About eight years ago, I was tied into one I think was over 1,000 pounds. It was on 30-pound line. After five hours, I was getting nowhere with him, so I decided to put some pressure on him and my reel came apart.

“The most important thing in thresher fishing is to have a wire leader. If you don’t and you hook one, chances are 99% you’ll lose it. I prefer 10 feet of single-strand, because it’s sufficient in case you hook a really big fish.

“Bill Beebe was fishing with me Saturday, along with my uncle, Berel Shinbane, and a friend, Bill Merry. We caught a 200-pounder that four of us shared the rod on. We were 3 1/2 miles off Ocean Park in Venice, drifting with a live mackerel.

“The bait was down 30 or 40 feet when it hit. We had it at the boat in an hour and 20 minutes.

“The threshers are really big this year. In 1984, people on my boat caught 20 threshers and they averaged something like 50 to 60 pounds. Last Saturday alone, I saw four fish landed on boats near us and they were all 60 to 200 pounds.” GARY BETHEL, 30, commercial fisherman, Marina del Rey--”A friend of mine, Scott Niven, and I went out on a 27-foot boat two weeks ago and caught a 306-pound thresher in Santa Monica Bay.

“We caught it with a mackerel that was not only dead, it was one that has been lying on the dock all night. It just shows, you definitely don’t need live bait.

“We were fishing about four miles off the end of the Santa Monica pier, drifting, with the mackerel down about 25 feet. We didn’t see it before the strike. Someone had just caught a 125-pounder in that area, that’s the only reason we were there.

“It was clear water, we were using 30-pound line with 12 feet of 170-pound wire leader. When he hit the mackerel, I set the hook but all of us took turns fighting him.

“I weighed him later at 306 pounds, and he dressed out at 180 fillets. I’m getting around $2.50 a pound for thresher now.

“I’ve fished for threshers for 15 years now, and I’d say Santa Monica Bay is as good a place as any, if you want to catch one. Three years ago, Larry Derr and I, on separate boats fishing right next to each other, caught 40 threshers--29 on his boat, 11 on mine--about two miles off Topanga Canyon.”

DENNIS BEDFORD, 36, Department of Fish and Game biologist, Laguna Niguel--”The most likely reason for an abundance of threshers is an abundance of anchovies, since that’s practically all they eat.

“You can examine the stomachs of threshers caught in the same commercial net with blue and bonito sharks, and find that blues and bonitos will have a variety of food in them--red crabs, anchovies, mackerel. Thresher stomachs will be 100% anchovies.

“We’re worried about threshers right now. There’s a bill pending in Sacramento that would eliminate the months of June, July and half of August from the drift net shark fishery. That should drop the harvest of both threshers and swordfish by about 50%.

“We see signs that too many threshers are being taken by commercial fishermen. The sport catch is less than 1% of the total. The pounds of threshers taken commercially is dropping over the last couple of years, and prior to that it was increasing.

“There have been some shifts in the age structure of the thresher commercial catch, too.

“The thresher fishery is relatively new. It really started around 1977. Prior to that, not very many (commercial) fishermen paid much attention to it. The fishery has expanded greatly in the last four years. And, as is always the case in a new fishery, fishermen have become skilled very quickly at catching threshers.”

THE BIGGEST CATCHES

INTERNATIONAL GAME FISH ASSN. WORLD RECORDS FOR THRESHER SHARKS

LINE CLASS WEIGHT PLACE YEAR FISHERMAN Men-2 Vacant Women-2 Vacant Men-4 Vacant Women-4 Vacant Men-8 91-8 Santa Monica Bay 1977 James Olson Women-8 34-0 Santa Monica Bay 1977 Ruth Kameon Men-12 147-0 Santa Monica Bay 1977 James Olson Women-12 138-0 Santa Monica Bay 1977 Sylvia Naibert Men-16 Vacant Women-16 Vacant Men-20 207-0 Catalina Channel 1975 Leo Dee Women-20 174-8 Santa Monica Bay 1977 Sylvia Naibert Men-30 329-0 Newport Beach 1978 Michael Welt Women-30 300-0 Bay of Islands, New Zealand 1972 Anne Clark Men-50 767-3 Bay of Islands, New Zealand 1983 D. L. Hannah Women-50 448-0 Montauk, N.Y. 1984 Lynnette Pintauro Men-80 739-0 Tutukaka, New Zealand 1975 Brian Galvin Women-80 802-0 Tutukaka, New Zealand 1981 Dianne North Men-130 676-0 Mayor Island, New Zealand 1978 Robert Faulkner Women-130 729-0 Mayor Island, New Zealand 1959 Mrs. V. Brown