Anchorage Daily News

Mat Rude was hoping for a hefty halibut late last month on a charter fishing expedition to Montague Island when his pole suddenly bent double.

"I initially thought it might be a big halibut, but he headed away from the boat," said Rude, who works in project management for GCI in Anchorage.

"The captain clued into the fact that it was a salmon shark pretty fast."

The 7-foot fish weighed 266 pounds hanging on a scale back at the Seward dock several hours later. By then, it had been gutted and bled out to help preserve the meat. Fresh out of the water, Rude estimated, the shark may have weighed 350 pounds.

"It wasn't an absolutely brutal battle," said Kevin Knight, 26, a captain with Pro Fish-N-Sea Charters in Seward. "We were able to get him in quick. Salmon sharks will tend to run up (toward the boat). Halibut tend to hug the bottom."

A decade ago, salmon shark was Southcentral's hot new big game fishery, with boats from Seward, Valdez, Cordova and other ports chasing the huge fish that can exceed 800 pounds.

That fervor has waned.

While more than a dozen boats still chase salmon sharks out of those ports, as well as Whittier, some charter boat captains have stopped or cut back shark fishing out of concern for the population and most are preaching catch-and-release to their clients.

"It's not nearly as active as it used to be," said Dan Bosch, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist for Anchorage, Prince William Sound and Resurrection Bay.

'LAY OFF'

For Knight, who grew up in Kodiak, landing the shark near Montague Island brought back memories of his start as a young deckhand for Capt. Bob Candopoulos, the owner of Saltwater Safari Co. in Seward and a pioneer of sportfishing for salmon sharks in Southcentral.

"He was the only one in town going for them at that point," Knight said. "I think back then, he landed 100 sharks a year.

"But I was a young deckhand and more worried about baiting hooks than I was about sharks."

These days, Candopoulos has all but stopped shark hunting.

"It's not something to be proud of," he said. "If the main reason for doing it is for an impressive picture back at the dock, that's not a good enough reason for going out and killing them.

"In a 10-year period, I killed more than 1,100 salmon sharks, and if you take that many apex predators out of the system, it can't be good. It's a macho thing. It's an ego stroker. I've been doing this (guiding sport fish clients) for 30 years, and I'm not into that anymore.

"I just thought I needed to lay off."

Any shark fishing Candopoulous does these days is catch-and-release. Several times, he's guided 20-year-old angler Johnny Ellsworth, one of the first anglers to land a salmon shark on a fly. Four years ago, Ellsworth landed a 279.8-pounder on 30-pound leader after an exhausting fight of nearly four hours in Prince William Sound.

Whether the salmon sharks Candopoulous and other anglers took over the years had an impact on the overall population is unknown. Scientists don't know how big the population is or whether it's growing or shrinking.

"We don't know a lot about the stocks of salmon sharks," acknowledged Fish and Game area management and research biologist Scott Meyer in Homer. "It does seem like effort is down, particularly in Seward."

A Fish and Game tracking study from 1998-2004 established an average salmon shark length of 7 1/2 feet with an average weight of 290 pounds for males, 325 for females. The oldest male found was 17 and the oldest female was 20.

"There's no immediate concern (about the salmon shark population), but there's always a background concern because they're pretty long-lived," Meyer said.

The tiger of the North Pacific, salmon sharks reach 12 feet in length and can weigh more than 800 pounds. Of the 10 sharks found in Alaska waters, the salmon shark is the most common.

ON THE PROWL

They range from the Sea of Japan east to Alaska waters as far south as Baja California.

Named after one of their favorite prey, pink salmon, the sharks are equipped with the same extraordinary sensory systems as other sharks and are adept at hunting fast-moving fish in the ocean depths.

A special network of sense organs in their snouts allow them to react to electrical currents other fish generate. They have an acute sense of sound.

Their streamlined, blue-backed bodies are built for speed, silence and mobility.

Unlike most fish, sharks have no air bladder for flotation, and therefore can descend or ascend in the water column like a missile. But if they stop moving, they'll sink -- so they're often on the prowl.

While Candopoulous has all but abandoned shark fishing in Seward, several charters out of Valdez, Whittier and Cordova continue to pursue them in Prince William Sound.

Dave Wiley of Valdez, who owns Orion Charters with his wife Frieda, said he's cut back his shark trips from 10 to 20 per year to just two this year.

Despite the lack of data, he believes the salmon shark population in Prince William Sound is "definitely declining."

He's among the many boats that are urging anglers to practice catch-and-release.

"Ten years ago, it seemed like sharks were just prolific," he said.

But back then, he said, just a couple of Valdez boats pursued them.

Now, he said, four or five Valdez boats hunt sharks at least some of the time.

And even if the population is down, "up here you have an excellent chance of hooking one -- particularly compared to the East Coast and other places in the Lower 48."

Find reporter Mike Campbell online at adn.com/contact/mcampbell or call 257-4329.

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