Shark Lap Dance
As we watched Capt. Danny Wrenn, of 96 Charter Company, pull his battleship gray 20′ Sea Mark up to the boat ramp at Wrightsville Beach, the “Jaws” jokes subsided for just a moment while we stowed our gear and drinks, but they had ratcheted back into full effect by the time we slid under the drawbridge headed for Masonboro Inlet with sharks on the brain.
Watching a bright yellow balloon race across the surface and disappear less than a half hour after we’d left the inlet’s jetties in our wake only brought the New Jersey man-eater dragging the yellow harpoon buoy across the surface further to the forefront of my mind. Gary Hurley was first up, and he took the rod while the unseen fish tore line off the 20 lb. class live bait outfit Danny and cohort Pete Davis had baited with a live menhaden and set out behind the boat just a few moments earlier. 
As Gary held on, the creature finished its strong first run, and he was able to turn it towards the boat, beginning to put a little of the line the hard charge had removed from the reel back where it belonged.
Shortly though, after taking him from bow to stern along the boat’s port gunnel, the fish decided to change course, and quickly undermined Gary’s efforts, taking nearly as much line as it had on the first run.
Just after Gary hooked his fish, something picked up a live peanut pogy I’d been fishing on a Carolina rig on the bottom, hoping for a flounder or other tasty bottom dweller.
The fish immediately tore off line with urgency, and I thought perhaps I’d hooked a red drum until a shark came flying out of the water a dozen yards off the boat’s bow. It turned out to be an Atlantic sharpnose, but was doing its best impression of the blacktip and spinner sharks that inhabit the same area and are noted for jumping soon after they’re hooked.
The flounder rod was a bit undergunned for a shark of this size (around 3′), and the shark put up a dogged fight, but I was able to pressure it to the boat in around five minutes while Gary was still hard at work on his fish.
Danny released the sharpnose unharmed in short order, and everyone’s attention returned to the battle between Gary and his unknown opponent.
When he coaxed the fish into turning towards the boat for a second time, he was able to gain back much of the line the fish had taken, getting it close enough to the boat for the captain to make a visual confirmation of its species.
“It’s another hammerhead!” Danny said excitedly after he saw the shark swimming off the boat’s port side. He and Capt. Travis Dant had released another hammer just a few days before and a short distance from where we were fishing, but these were the first two the captain had encountered.
Apparently seeing the shark wasn’t equivalent to catching the shark, as it took Gary back and forth along both gunnels with short, bulldogging runs for the next few minutes.
Finally, the pressure overwhelmed the beast, and Hurley was able to pull it to the surface on the boat’s starboard side, where Danny was waiting with gloved hands.
After grabbing the hammerhead by the tail, Danny brought it into the boat and he and Pete removed the hook before Danny picked it up with a firm grasp around the base of its tail and beneath its pectoral fins. Gary stepped up for a few quick photos while the captain cradled the shark, the eye perched on its strange, stalked head staring at me through the camera lens.
After the shutter clicked a few times, Danny slid it over the gunnel, and the odd, prehistoric creature swam into the clear green-blue water with a few strong thrusts of its tail.
“I think these are the scalloped ones,” Danny said, referring back to a conversation we’d had about which of the several hammerhead species we were seeing. The scalloped hammerheads feature several distinct notches in the leading edge of their “hammer,” which separates them from the great and other hammerheads.
We’d set up anchor and just begun to create a chum slick on a hard bottom area a short distance off Masonboro Island before the action started, and barely had time to get a full spread in the water when the first fish struck. After we landed the first two, there was a short (very short) lull in the action, and I took time to make a closer examination of Danny’s sharking setup. While most anglers who chum will drop a chum block into a bag and be done with things, Wrenn goes just a bit further.
In addition to dangling a bag of Tournament Master Chum, a premium chum made of only menhaden and refined menhaden milk, over the gunnel, Danny fills a plastic bottle partway up with menhaden oil, then punches a hole in the lid, and ties that off to the transom as well, creating a huge surface slick. If that weren’t enough, he and Pete also frequently flipped handfuls of menhaden chunks into the water behind the boat, adding even more visual impact and tasty tidbits to the smelly, water column-saturating plume emanating from Wrenn’s boat. The plan obviously works, as we had several sharks over the course of the day, including a smaller hammerhead (around 2.5′), intrigued and swimming around the boat.
Several nights in the week before our trip, Wrenn had enjoyed success with blacktip sharks and hooked a tarpon while fishing inside Masonboro Inlet at Shinn Creek and Banks Channel, but he didn’t want to do so on our daytime trip, and his explanation why made immediate sense.
“There’re just too many people in the water in here,” he’d said while guiding the boat through Masonboro Inlet, and a quick look around revealed a paddling surfer, several wading anglers, and some swimmers as confirmation. “I’d feel terrible if somebody got bit in here on the same day I was fishing and chumming.”
Since the east winds and current were pushing our slick almost directly onto the beach midway down Masonboro Island, he’d also checked to make sure nobody was hanging out on the beach or swimming before we’d starting chumming in the ocean.
Soon after the hammerhead release, one of the heavier spinning rods Danny had rigged with wire leaders and shark baits doubled over, and Pete handed it to me as I scrambled to the back of the boat. This fish took off with even more speed than the hammerhead had, and the rising angle of line in the water soon told why-a shark burst from the water off the boat’s back port corner, spinning wildly a few times before it re-entered with a splash. The shark quickly attempted another jump, but barely cleared the water the second time before continuing its run.
“See that,” Danny said as everyone aboard stared at the whitewater where the shark had just re-entered. “That’s a blacktip or a spinner. Actually the only way to tell them apart is that the blacktips don’t have black tips on their anal fins, but the spinners do. Weird, huh?”
The shark continued a run much like Gary’s earlier fish while I held the rod tip high, trying to keep up the pressure and turn the fish, and battle, my way. Eventually, I succeeded, although the stubborn creature would only let me gain a few yards at a time before turning and halting the process yet again.
After several laps around the boat, with the fish begrudgingly allowing me to gain some line intermittently, I finally worked it up from the depths, and it wallowed along the boat’s starboard rail just forward of the console.
“It’s a blacktip,” Danny and I said almost at the same time, as he turned it over and took it by the tail, revealing an all-gray/white anal fin. The captain boated the shark in the same manner he had Gary’s hammer, and it was my turn to pose for some pictures.
Just like Gary’s, my shark swam off vigorously as soon as it hit the water, as though the brief period aboard the boat had allowed it time to collect itself.
Over the course of the day, we fished one to two surface or midwater rigs with balloons tied varying distances up the lines in order catch the wind and carry them behind the boat, suspended in the water column by the balloon’s buoyancy. Our other “shark” rods were bottom lines baited with live and cut baits on wire leaders, and Gary and I kept Carolina-rigged live baits on the bottom hoping for flounder or other fish.
Danny’s shark rigs are modified versions of the Owen Lupton drum rig, featuring 2-3 oz. egg sinkers crimped in place a few inches up the heavy cable leader from a large circle hook, preventing sharks from swallowing the hooks and endangering themselves or, by way of their teeth, the 80 lb. braided shock leaders the rigs are tied to.
“Before I rigged up with the 80 lb. shock leaders,” Danny explained after we’d boated my blacktip, “I lost a lot of fish because they spin when they’re jumping and wrap themselves up in the line.” Lesser line than 80 lb. braid is easily parted by the shark’s tails and rough skin, but the braid seems to hold up well.”
All the lines drew plenty of shark strikes, including our Carolina rigs with mono leaders, and we landed a surprisingly large number of the sharks that bit the Carolina rigs, as the circle hooks we were using found the corners of the shark’s mouths every time.
With our chum slick established, it was a rare 10 minute period that someone on the boat wasn’t battling a shark. Most of the bites came from the sharpnoses, and I quickly lost count of the number of the 2-3′ sharks we landed.
We caught at least 5 more blacktips, however, including one I hooked on the flounder gear that put up what was definitely my hardest battle of the day. This one didn’t jump, which Danny said was typical of the 3-4′ blacktips.
“Once they get a little bigger,” he said after we watched one in the 5′ range leap from the water spinning only to break a faulty swivel, “most of them jump on that first run.”
The fish I’d hooked on the 4000 size spinning reel made a hard run, but it didn’t end up in a jump. Instead, the shark chose to duke it out in the depths, taking me around the boat and under the anchor line so many times that Danny, Pete, and Gary began to keep a running tally of what lap I was on.
While my attention was more on keeping up with the fish than my lap count, I believe it was sometime after the fish made me pass the rod under the anchor rope for the sixth time that it finally surfaced. After that first blacktip, we didn’t need to remove any more from the water for photos, so this one was quickly released boatside, like all the rest of the at least 20 sharks we hooked that afternoon.
After each of us had an opportunity to fight a blacktip and several sharpnoses, we decided to call it an afternoon, and packed the gear in. We’d only fished for around three hours, and had near nonstop action with hard-running fish that averaged 3′ long or better. Though we didn’t see any, at this time of year anglers always stand a chance of hooking a tarpon or cobia while shark-fishing, too, adding even more potential excitement to an already heart-pounding trip.
Unlike Capt. Quint, we had set out with no intentions of harming any of the sharks we hooked, but our mission to find fast action with Jaws’ relatives had been a total success.
If fast summertime action with large, hard-charging and often acrobatic predators sounds like a good way to spend a summer day to you, give Capt. Danny Wrenn of 96 Charter Company a call at (910) 619-2224 to talk about a shark trip.
He also specializes in targeting drum, flounder, and other species inshore and spanish and king mackerel off the beaches during the warm season, and anglers can often hook up with some sharks and other species in the same summer day.
