Why is it so popular!!?? you may ask. The chances of success are huge. For a long time, sharks are released after be caught maintaining their population levels. Some fishing boats are mandatory to tag some species of sharks such as the Mako shark for scientific research about their migratory paths.
The motive of this post is not to explain shark behavior, but to show you how we must successfully fish for it.
The chum. Usually we use sardines chopped in medium size pieces, just enough to drop tiny pieces through the net bag. Not pieces that allow any fish to eat, we just want them to get excited. Otherwise they eat the chum and not the bait. Set the chum net/bag hanging from the boat just at water level. With the boat slopes, the chum is all the time banging against the surface of the water and never stop breaking it self and releasing oil/fat.
If there is more then a couple of fishing lines, all of them might get tangled, so it's important to have the boat side drifting. Any skipper knows how to do that. There is a method in the madness.
Shark will eat what ever is available, which doesn't mean you can use hamburguer as bait. A chunk of mackerel is fine but we mostly use squid. It is harder meat and if the shark just nibble the bait, will not rip it off the hook leaving an empty hook. Shark do not do suction to pull the food into their mouth, they needs to bite the bait and if he likes the taste of the squid from the first bite, will turn around for the rest of the bait with full open mouth. Make sure the squid head is locked in the hook leaving just the tentacles hanging, else, the shark will take the head which is attached with the squid guts and you'll have just a empty hook or a non appealing squid body in the hook.
Drop your hook between 10 and 20 meters and set your balloon in line. You will not need any weight in the line. The steel terminal and the hook are enough.
Follow the drawing to spread the lines in the water and wait for them to bite.
Must comun are the blue shark, followed by the mako. Mako is an excellent trophy due to the way and stamina of his fight.
Also hammerheads and threshers can be caught.
Thresher are a once a year deal and i've only have seen in this waters, what i call small tresher. A small thresher is up to a 1 meter long body (tail are the same size of the body) but they can grow up to 2 meters body.
The thresher is a marlin shark. It jumps out of the water setting a show for the fisherman. Sometimes you can see them jump just for fun.
There are a lot of details that could be exposed in this article about shark fishing in the Algarve, so I'm happy to help you with any doubt.
An important detail: Some days, with clear water, when you look down to the endless of the ocean, I mean in ocean waters trying to have a glimpse of the bottom of the sea, you'll get a black blue color feeling instead of the usual dark blue. If this black blue feeling comes with what we call, a cucumber freshness smell.... Forget shark fishing that day.
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