maine sharks?

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont Fishing Reports and Fishing Information
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reelemin
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maine sharks?

Post by reelemin »

does know about or hear of any body doing any shore bound shark fishing in maine?? my father has a home on the coast in waldoboro and was wondering if there are any species fishable from the shore ?? thanks for any help.

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Post by onshore »

I lived in New Hampshire for may years and kept my boat in York, Maine. I dis a lot of fishing along the shore and surffishing also.

We caught Blue and Mako sharks offshore and occasionally heard of someone catching one nearshore; but never heard of anyone fishing for them from shore.
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reelemin
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Post by reelemin »

guess i wont know until i try.

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Post by onshore »

Ya, you've got to try to know.

However, I would think that the sharks in Maine are not really what you would call inshore sharks. Mainly they are Blues and Mako, both known more as peligic or offshore sharks. About the only one common along the shore is the Spiney Dogfish Shark

Also, water temps in Maine will be mostly 60 and lower except after extreem summer warm spells, so none of the common sharks we have down here. For more, try:

SPINY DOGFISH SHARK - The spiny dogfish shark (Squalus acanthias) is the most common shark and travels in schools. They are called dogfish because they travel and hunt in packs.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjec ... fish.shtml
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reelemin
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Post by reelemin »

ya its to late for me to get up there this season.. but next summer when i see all the mackrel come threw i will try to free line a mackrel or put out a nice peice of cod. well see maybe get lucky.. thanks for all the great info.. i can catch them down here but not to sure at the other end..

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Post by james380 »

I went out on a charter/party boat years ago during the summer in Maine abd all we caught was those dogfish. One after the other so the feeding in packs explanation fits. I don't think there was one caught over 3 feet if that.
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Post by onshore »

A three foot Doggie is pretty big. They rarely get to be four foot. Here's more from "Fishes of the Gulf of Maine"
on line it's: http://www.gma.org/fogm/
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Sand shark Carcharias taurus Rafinesque 1810
Dogfish shark; Ground shark

[Bigelow and Schroeder, 1948 p. 100.]

[Garman, 1913 pl. 6, figs. 1-3.]


Figure 4.—Sand shark (Carcharias taurus), about 40 inches long, Cape Cod; and upper and lower teeth from front part of mouth of a larger specimen from New Jersey, about natural size. From Bigelow and Schroeder. Drawings by E. N. Fischer.

Description—
The large size of the second dorsal fin, and of the anal as well (which is about equal to the first dorsal instead of much smaller) is of itself enough to distinguish this species from all other Gulf of Maine sharks. The fact that the first dorsal fin is located but little in front of the pelvics, and that the trunk seems crowded with fins of equal size, is a useful field mark. We may also point out that the pectoral fins are not much larger than the other fins—triangular rather than sickle-shaped; that the upper lobe of the tail is nearly one-third as long as head and body together and notched near its tip, with the lower lobe about one-third as long as the upper lobe; and that the head is flat above, the snout short, conical with rather sharp tip. The teeth also (alike in the two jaws) are diagnostic, being long, narrow, sharp-pointed, and smooth-edged, with one (rarely two) small spurs ("denticles") on either side near the base.

Size—
Most of the sand sharks that are caught in the northern part of their American range, from Delaware Bay to Cape Cod, are immature, of perhaps 4 to 6 feet. But adults up to 8 or 9 feet long are reported there from time to time, especially from the vicinity of Nantucket, where a commercial shark fishery yielded many of them in [page 19] the early 1920's. And large ones, alone, have been reported from North Carolina, southward. The greatest recorded length is 10 feet 5 inches, from southwestern Florida. And the sand shark does not mature sexually until perhaps 7 feet long, or more. A weight of 250 pounds is recorded for one 8 feet 10 inches long, showing how much lighter a fish this is, length for length, than various other sharks.

Color—
Light gray-brown above, darkest along back, snout, and upper sides of pectorals, paling on the sides to grayish white on lower surface; sides of trunk rearward from pectorals variously marked with roundish to oval spots, of which there may be upwards of 100, varying in color from yellowish brown to ocher yellow. The rear margins of the fins are edged with black on some specimens, but not on others.

Habits and food—
Despite its trim appearance and voracious appetite, this is a comparatively sluggish shark, living mostly on bottom or close to it; more active and taking a bait more freely at night than by day. During its summer visits to the New England coast it holds so close to the coast that it has never been reported from Georges Bank, or from the outer part of the Continental Shelf. Most of those caught are from depths not greater than 1 to 5 fathoms, occasionally perhaps as deep as 10 fathoms, and many come right in to tide line along the beaches. They may sometimes be seen moving slowly to and fro at the surface, over bars, with dorsal and caudal fins showing above the water; and they sometimes enter the mouths of rivers. They capture great numbers of small fish, which are their chief diet, particularly menhaden, cunners, mackerel, skates, silver hake, flounders, alewives, butterfish, and south of Cape Cod, scup, weakfish, and bonito. Sand sharks have been seen surrounding and harrying schools of bluefish; they have even been known to attack nets full of bluefish, which gives a measure of their voracity. They also eat lobsters, crabs, and squid.

Breeding—
The eggs of the sand shark are hatched within the parent and are retained there until the resultant young are ready for independent existence, but there is no placental connection between mother and developing embryo. It has recently been discovered that while a ripe female contains a large number of eggs, only two embryos develop as a rule, one in each oviduct; they are nourished (at least largely) by swallowing the unfertilized eggs[30] with which the stomach of the embryo becomes greatly distended. Females with large embryos have so far been reported only from Florida and from Louisiana, whereas others taken near Woods Hole have contained eggs only, making it likely that the small specimens that are so common along southern New England have come from a more southerly birthplace.

General range—
Coastal waters on both sides of the Atlantic; Maine to Florida and Brazil in the west; Mediterranean, tropical West Africa, Canaries, and Cape Verdes in the east; also South Africa; represented in Argentine waters and in the Indo-Pacific by close relatives.

Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine—
The sand shark is by far the most common of its tribe, next to the smooth and spiny dogfishes, along southern New England and at the westerly entrance to the Gulf of Maine. It is plentiful at Woods Hole from June to November, to be found anywhere in that region in shoal waters, even coming up to the wharves. At Nantucket, too, it is so abundant that shark fishing, with the sand shark as the chief objective, is a popular sport. The facts that a catch of about 1,900 sharks by three boats on Horseshoe Shoal, in Nantucket Sound, June to September 1918, was mostly of this species, as was another catch of 350 sharks, taken near Nantucket in the early 1920's, illustrate their numbers there. Scattered sand sharks are also caught along the outer beaches of Cape Cod by surf anglers (published records are for Monomoy, Chatham, and Provincetown) and there are enough of them along this stretch of beach in some summers (1951 was a case in point) for them to be a nuisance to anglers casting for striped bass in the surf at night.
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Post by mackboi0127 »

i hate dogfish i used to work on the driftboats in brooklyn and we would go fluking and all of a sudden hundreds and hundreds of dogs start to come over the rail uhh tangles left and right but maybe the only other sharksi have caught off the beach were little threshers but mostly in the summer their that close :D :D

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reelemin
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Post by reelemin »

dude you caught little threasers off the beach thats pretty cool.. what did you catch them on?

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Post by mackboi0127 »

bluefish chunk occasionally they would hit my fluke on the way up :D

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