# do you bleed your catch from the yak???



## Fishing Man (Oct 4, 2006)

hey guys,

ive always wondered how or if people manage to bleed their catch from yaks. with fish like mackeral, tuna, bonito, tailor etc its apparently better to bleed them, i know I always have when catching tailor.

how do you do it? do you simply hang em over the side or is that risky business? i have often thought of maybe a box or esky on the back where u can do it then just let all the blood out when u get to shore/

any ideas on this


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## sitonit (Dec 29, 2006)

Hi Ben just been thinnking about that too, especially for fish like mackerel, I always bleed other fish I have caught but i have only just started thinking about larger pelagics I guess I will as i have a cinstant stream of pillie blood leaving the kayak, interesting to hear what others do.
John


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## FishinDan (Jul 3, 2006)

One of those white 20lt containers (Like the painters use) might be handy. Pick em up cheap, and the lid would seal in most of it if you don't want it in the water. Take the lid off, hold them in it, neck em, let the blood drain out, put the lid on, rinse them off in the water, put them in the esky.

There is the downside of bitey things following fresh blood through the water :shock:


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## Heno (Jul 3, 2006)

I usually carry an old hessian bag with me to put any fish in that I may catch 
and there is no way that I would bleed any fish whilst out on the water although sometimes I have paddled back to shore to bleed and fillet them on the beach away from the kayak then wrapped them up to go into the bag. If you were using an esky I would't have any hesitation in bleeding any fish.


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## kingfisher111 (Jun 13, 2006)

I bleed them straight away put a tailrope on them and leave them hanging in the water but then again I`m targeting sharks!!! so every little bit helps. My advise is not neccessarily good!! Steve.


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## DGax65 (Jun 7, 2006)

With larger fish I put them on a game clip as soon as I get them aboard. I bleed them immediately. The quickest way is usually to pull the gills from one or both sides. We don't have a big shark problem (that harbor seal that hauled out yesterday with the large, fresh semi-circular bite mark doesn't mean anything....it must have been a car wreck or a knife fight or something :shock: ). It's been 40 years since the last attack in La Jolla, so nobody worries much about bleeding fish (that 3.5m mako caught 3 miles south of here doesn't mean anything either :roll: ) Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. The biggest danger in hanging fish over the side is having a sea lion flip you when he grabs the free lunch.

Does this look unsafe?









Here is Holy Mackerel covered in yellow tail blood with his legs hanging over the side. 









Good thing we only have those mellow Southern California Great Whites around here


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## Jacko (Aug 30, 2005)

i ant gonna bleed no fish here havent seen a shark on my yak yet but when out in boat we had a run in with a 4m great white and the boat wasnt big enough and it was not far from where i yak fish


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## Crikey (Oct 30, 2005)

Fishing Man:

My method of bleeding them is pretty simple.

Bring them in a landing net as it gives you some control of the little buggers, unhook them in the net, then over the side still in the net and cut the gill latch, then move smartly on towing the landing net. The way I look at it if a man in a grey coat wants the fish he can have my $15 landing net as well. The fish will bleed out in a matter of a minute or so then straight into a non draining bucket I have in the crate. I normally gut them a little later. I really think berleying with fish gut after landing a distressed pelagic and bleeding it all in the same spot may be asking for it.

Did anyone read the fishraider report of the jew that was taken by the bull shark up at Gladesville recently, I heard that a 3m bully was netted at Grotto Point so precautions against sharks even in the Harbour are worth considering.

As an aside I had a team of specialist divers from the US working for me in Cairns last October they dived at Trinity Wharf (in town) after heavy rain and during the night so the visibility was 6". They mentioned crocs and sharks and dismissed them as a hazard of the job. Better men than me I can tell you.


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## DGax65 (Jun 7, 2006)

> Biggest damn shark I ever saw in thousands of ocean miles of sailing was just off of La Jolla. Enjoy!


 :shock: gulp :shock:

That's the La Jolla in NSW, right?

But I thought we didn't have big sharks here. Damn. Now I'll have to keep my feet inside while I fish :roll:

All kidding aside; it can't be that dangerous in these waters. There have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the water off La Jolla over the last forty years and there hasn't been a single attack. In that time the seal and sea lion population has increased dramatically. While there are sightings of sharks or signs of predation every month or so, they haven't attacked anyone. I can understand the concern in Australia, where you have a variety of more aggressive sharks. I'd never hang my feet over the sides if we had tigers or bull/whalers in our waters.

After I bleed the fish, I give it a quick rinse off in the water and I store it in my game bag. I have a plastic bag lining the game bag to prevent leakage of blood. I'll also rinse out the yak and troll away from the blood in the water. I hope I don't leave much of a scent trail. It isn't going to stop a determined shark from tracking me down, but the odds of that happening just aren't very great. I am much more worried about run-ins with aggressive bull sea lions.

If I ever make it over there to fish I'll be sure to buy a shark shield.


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## hairymick (Oct 18, 2005)

Good Thread,

SOT fishing, I just cut their throats, & chuck em up in the bow under a wet hessian bag till they bleed out, then transfer the fish to ice. All the blood drains out the scuppers.

In the SIK I cut thier throats hand hang them over the side till they bleed out and again chuck em up the bow under a wet bag till I can get them onto the ice.

Never been threatoned by a shark while in the yak. Some get a bit curious though.


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## RedPhoenix (Jun 13, 2006)

Unfortunately, due to the change in ownership of this web site and the lack of response by the owners to my requests to remove my email address from all administrative-level notifications and functionality, I have decided to remove my posts on AKFF. Thank you for the great times, the fantastic learning experiences and the many many fish. If you are desperate for the old content of this particular post, it is available below base64 encoded and bzip2 compressed.

Red.

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## bazzoo (Oct 17, 2006)

redphoenix said:


> DGax65 said:
> 
> 
> > The fact that there have been very few incidents, is a testament to the relative lack of interest that sharks have in humans as a distinct prey item.
> ...


 i think your probably right Red, as we bear no resemblance to their normal food, and in most cases of shark attack, they have had one bite and not returned for seconds, I HOPE.


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## DGax65 (Jun 7, 2006)

Red
I've seen the tracks of a couple of GWS that have had tags implanted. The sharks that are at the Guadalupe Islands in Oct-Dec head back up to the Farallons off San Francisco to catch the spring feast. Some have even traveled as far as Hawaii. 
The only attacks on kayaks that I have heard of in California have occurred farther up the coast in the area with higher concentrations of great whites. I've seen a couple of reports of smaller GWS snatching salmon from people just as they were about to net them. That would scare the crap out of me if I were reaching over the transom to net a fish and a white grabbed it away from me. If that happened to me on a kayak it would scare the crap out of me; and probably the colon, small intestine and most of my stomach. I had a sea lion try to grab a fish that I was lifting into my yak and I almost had a heart attack. The damn thing came up from under the yak where I couldn't see it coming :shock:


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## fishinswing (May 15, 2006)

Having spoken to Billybob about his makeral catches, he doesn't bleed them until well out of the area where he catches them and sometimes dosen't even bleed them at all. He has had lots of coments about how good his mackeral steaks taste that proves you don't need to bleed them. It's also safer if there is a big sharks lurking around. :shock:


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## Astro (Nov 27, 2006)

i have tell you about new years

i was taking my 2 sons ageed 4 + 7 on the back of my outback...
we were camping at cape hillsborough just north of mackay, lovely spot 

any way there are a couple of small islands/headlands that are cut off by h20 at high tide and i was taking them out and around one as i had done the previous day solo. 8)

on the way out i spot a stinkboat with an occupant fighting a fish, judging by the bend in the rod a very large fish

i pedal closer and closer both boys keenly interested in the trip and watching the fight

closer and closer we get and just as we reach the boat the occupant pulls out the head of a very large cat fish. :shock: :shock:

the head was the size of a rock melon and you could of easily put your fist in the mouth :shock:

here i am with 2 young boys on a 1 man vessel with a large toothy somewhere underneath....

it was amazing how calm we all were??? the boys said COOL!!! and we safely finished our trip as if there was nothing to be concerned with  

and at the end of the day if you are going to live then there are unseen dangers everywhere and if we were to worry about possibilities and not do stuff then we would cease to live.....

but saying that i would never bleed over side ever.... around here since there are numerous tiger and bull sharks and many crocs

cut the throat and into a sealed bucket, i would take a large fish straight back to shore if i was going to keep it anyway since it is very hard to maintain the quality of the flesh without lots of ice


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## JT (May 25, 2006)

Depends on the size of the fish/how far off shore and the species. If I bleed I try and move away afterwards so there is no logical connection between fish gunk in the water and that plastic thing floating on top of the water in a sharks mind (then again what the hell do I know about what is going on in a shark's mind :roll: )

Doug...you mentioned the Farrallon Islands. There is a brilliant book on the Farrallons and it's huge GWS population called The Devils Teeth written by a woman named Susan Casey. Very good reading for anyone interested in the sea and GWSharks in what must be one of the most inhostpitable places on earth. It's a good old read and I would happily donate it to the AKFF library but my Aunt won't give it back :?

Perhaps we could put the whole shark/yak debate to bed once and for all by putting a trip of say 6 yaks together and chumming a whole bunch of them up and seeing what happens? If nothing happens then that would pretty much reinforce the stats. I unfortunately am not available for that trip because hmmmm mumble mumble mumble but would be interested in the results.

:roll: 8)

JT


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## Peril (Sep 5, 2005)

I either throw a fish back, keep it alive or kill it quickly. The latter means blood so I just try to get the blood and guts over and done with quickly. On Friday I managed to get half the blood in the stubby holder (next time I should just have a stubby there), which annoyed me. Otherwise I think the connection between blood and guts and yak is momentary and easily diminished by the effects of wind and current


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## DGax65 (Jun 7, 2006)

Gatesy
The only problem with your method is that the shark gives the fish a good yank and before the rope parts the kayak flips and you're in the water: appetizer and then main course 

I've heard of a number of yakkers in my area that have been dumped by sea lions grabbing fish on stringers. Although mako and great whites are seen around here occasionally, they have yet to take an interest in kayaks. When you think about it; if sharks really were interested in humans as a food source it wouldn't be safe to enter the water. Think about how many people go into the oceans and estuaries around the world every day and how often do you hear of an attack. The odds are pretty good that you will never be attacked by a shark

Disclaimer: All that being said, I don't like hanging my feet over the side and if I were kayak fishing in Australia/New Zealand/South Africa/Florida/Gulf Coast/Central California/Mexico/the Caribbean/Indian Ocean/any island in the tropics I would use a shark shield 

I think if you just spike the fish, pull the gills to bleed and then stow them where the blood won't run into the water you should be fine. Obviously, the blood could attract sharks, but if you paddle up current you should be able to separate yourself from the attractant.


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