European record six gill Shark - Discussion

From Mod - Opinion only please guys, cheap shots will be deleted.


shark steakes in every restaurant down there for weeks

That is some fish, well done to those involved. I've mixed feelings about the photo.

shark steakes in every restaurant down there for weeks

you may have been joking, but apparently they are selling steaks through sealyons, the fish
distributor based at carrigaholt pier. Yes i wonder that too.

Jasus...thats some Beast...I reckon it died by being towed backwards .

ya but if it was me i would have shot it or something like that i wouldn t like to see it suffer

what type of gun do you bring fishing with you
i bring a sawn off 12bore with me on most charters

shame to kill a fish like that

Could i ask one of the mods of this thread which is about angling reports to move the 2 posts above
to a seperate conservation debate in some other forum. For the record, the six gill is rarely caught
as people do not fish heavy enough for them, but is in fact common and distributed worldwide.

secondly, the thing that affects fish stocks is commercial fishing. catching fish by rod and line is sustainable
and does not affect fish stocks. The lobby which argues that rod and line fishing affects stocks
is actually damaging because it distracts from the important issue of extermination of stocks by commercial fishing.

I disagree John. I think its fair comment and entirely relevant to the thread. Great fish and great achievement certainly but pictures like that belong in a different era and to be frank, im surprised the skipper allowed that. Disappointed.

I am with Pete on this.

Super achievement.

Fantastic fish, why kill it???????

Great catch, but surely would be best for the corpse to go a University or biologist for research. How much can a record really mean to a person? Shame to see in 2009 and in our waters. Same as going out and shooting a tiger in my opinion.

Hi Ditto rampent and petekd
Change the system of claiming records etc to prevent this kind of picture, and suffering that fish must have had being drowned whilst towed behind the boat. yes great fish to catch,and congrats to the skipper for knowing a regular mark to catch these sharks, but i would much rather see it swim off.
Appreciate others that have been caught, have been released, and jw i also appreciate that commercial fishing for sharks is deplorable,and would blitz rod and line catches, but we do not help our cause by these kind of photo's.
regards
screeming

Im not going to waste too much time on this. Screeming reels how come you are making a post on a fishing
site about suffering of fish? the mind boggles, you are out there every day sticking hooks in fish and catching them?

Also it seems daft to me that i have never once seen mention on this site when the council of ministers
override the scientists and allow a commercial fishery to exterminate a species, yet when one guy catches a record
fish and wishes to claim one fish people are queueing up to have a go at him. If you really think one fish
makes a difference should you be fishing at all?

Dont want to cause an argument or anything here JW and this is not a personal attack on either yourself or Luke so please dont take it that way but what you are saying above there makes little sense.

Times have changed, things have moved on from pictures of fellas beside a gantry with dead fish hanging off them. Our sport is under attack from a lot of angles, we have seen only a day or two ago, club secretarys being targetted with a mail shot by someone masquerading as the Green Party but most likely belonging to some anti blood sports group.

I agree wholeheartedly with you that the key to the major problems lie with commercial fishing but pictures as above offer no help to our cause whatsoever. I cant see any justification for dragging that fish until it drowned so the captor could get a bit of paper. I dont know the circumstances of the booking, I dont know what was said on the boat at the time so I'm not flinging mud at Luke here either, he is a top skipper and I have a lot of time for him.

Just my opinion that is all, I dont think that killing something of that magnitude is OK in this day and age. It might well only be one fish, thats not the point. I dont think anything gives us the right to go out and KILL something of that magnitude. If it was a trophy shot of a tiger or an elephant, there would be absolute uproar and rightly so. Same thing. Regardless as to whose fault it is, an anyone hand on heart say sharks arent under threat across the planet?

Once again, just to reiterate, this is my opinion only and its given without rancour or personal slight. I would have released that fish, unquestionably. I had a potential record Monk, it was released and the comments following, on the thread, via PM and in person from others were worth a hell of a lot more to me than a bit of paper. I know I caught it, the mates I was fishing with know I caught it and thanks to various forms of media, so does everyone else. The respect and kudos comes from catching the fish, fighting it and defeating it. There is no need for any more. Look at the lads catching large Tope from the shore and releasing them at the moment. The Irish Tope record has been broken numerous times over the past few years but people no longer wish to kill or subject there captures to unnecessary suffering or death. Respect.

Just a quick post from myself on this. Personally I would have been in two minds about taking such a fish, and until you get such a record breaking fish as Pete did, it difficult to say whay one would do.

The taking of National record fish is common place, even in areas of staunch rules, excellent policing of these rules and an impecible ethos for C&R. Many people want the achievement and it not fair to put this achievement down, just because you have no interest.

Records are not broken often, one large fish of any species every decade or longer perhaps, will do no harm to the species in question.

Commericial overfishing is much more of a threat to the Oceans of this planet that anything Angling will ever do.

As mentioned I am not 100% sure what I personally would do, just wanted to put a bit of devils advocate opinion out there for you guys to consider.

Had that fish been 15 kilos lighter, there would have been absolutely no justification in killing it. When it was killed it was just a POTENTIAL record.

Amazing fish, Shame about its death until the system changes I hope the record isn't broken again.

The Irish Tope record has been broken numerous times over the past few years but people no longer wish to kill or subject there captures to unnecessary suffering or death. Respect.

[/quote]
i know what you mean for example that 20lb bass caught in wterford last year and my caught a mullet of 12 lb we knew it was a record but didn t want to kill it so we let it go unfortunly we didn t have a pic of the fish. Also if you handed in a very good quaility photo and measurements of the fish could you still cliam the record

Look at the lads catching large Tope from the shore and releasing them at the moment. The Irish Tope record has been broken numerous times over the past few years but people no longer wish to kill or subject there captures to unnecessary suffering or death. Respect.

Just as an aside, I had a look at the rules for submitting record claims as there was some discussion of this after a recent comp.

You do not need to retain the body of the fish to make a record claim, you do have to weigh a fish on dry land.

RECORD FISH: A CLAIM FOR A NEW RECORD MUST INCLUDE A CLEAR SHARP PHOTOGRAPH, WITH AN
INDICATION OF SCALE (FISH SIZE), SHOWING THE IMPORTANT SPECIES IDENTIFICATION FEATURES

CLAIMS CANNOT BE ACCEPTED IN THE CASE OF FISH WHICH HAVE BEEN WEIGHED ON BOARD A BOAT.

Just a quick post from myself on this. Personally I would have been in two minds about taking such a fish, and until you get such a record breaking fish as Pete did, it difficult to say whay one would do.

The taking of National record fish is common place, even in areas of staunch rules, excellent policing of these rules and an impecible ethos for C&R. Many people want the achievement and it not fair to put this achievement down, just because you have no interest.

Records are not broken often, one large fish of any species every decade or longer perhaps, will do no harm to the species in question.

Commericial overfishing is much more of a threat to the Oceans of this planet that anything Angling will ever do.

As mentioned I am not 100% sure what I personally would do, just wanted to put a bit of devils advocate opinion out there for you guys to consider.

well i can assure you i wouldnt have killed it, i find the whole idea of claiming specimens/ records slightly childish, reminicent of coming home when you we're a child with a small fish to show mum and dad. the whole idea of killing a fish solely for a certificate proving you where lucky in catching a bigger fish than usual doesnt sit well with me. a couple of pictures, a pat on the back and few celebretory pints later will do fine thanks fishing is about as much repecting your catch as it is catching it. if you intend to kill a fish for consumption, (i don't care what species) do it humanly, mod edit

Hi All,
As usual this kind of stuff is making a lot of controversy. From the conservation point of view, things seem to be OK as six gill sharks are not considered endangered. Much worse is when you look at sites like http://www.americanfishingwire.com/49strand.asp where you clearly can see dead great white shark, which is considered endangered.
In my opinion there is nothing bad with killing a fish, especially if it’s not endangered and stocks are maintainable – there is a problem when you killing hundreds of thousands of fish (see commercial fishing, etc).

From the other hand, I think that what you going to do with your trophy fish say a lot about yourself. In my opinion great(?) achievement of that angler was wiped out completely with what happened next. Act of plain barbarity. But it is a personal matter whether you fish for your own pleasure and entertainment or for records and glory (IMHO very irrelevant).

To answer the question in the topic: Return.

Had that fish been 15 kilos lighter, there would have been absolutely no justification in killing it. When it was killed it was just a POTENTIAL record.

I agree Pete, but the 15kg lighter would be for a world record, which might be a little harder to get. The world records are issues by the IFGA and they have very stringent criteria with regard to line types and such.

The Irish record was broken by a mile.

Kev