A HUGE SHARK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22835, 20 March 1936, Page 15

A HUGE SHARK

CAUGHT OFF SYDNEY HEADS CLAIMED TO BE WORLD’S RECORD (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, March 13. Some big sharks have been caught off the New South Wales coast this season, hut all have been exceeded by one caught off Sydney Heads on Wednesday. A few weeks ago a man fishing from Maroubra Beach, a Sydney suburb, caught one which was said to be 15 feet long, but tills was not weighed, and hence it does not appear in the statistics of the New South Wales Rod FisheTs’ Society. The formality of weighing was duly observed by Mr John D. Baldwin, an American visitor, when he caught a tiger shark 13 feet long off Sydney Heads. The weight was 996£1b, and officials of the Rod Fishers’ Society claimed that this was a world’s record for a shark caught with rod and line. The shark was six feet in circumference. It was hooked with rod and reel on a 36 line, and was landed after a fight lasting only 20 minutes. The previous record was 9801 b. Mr Baldwin, whose home is at Worcester, Massachusetts, has spent a year in Australia. He is a member of the Great Barrier Reef Game Fish Angling Club, and last year won the patron’s trophy for the heaviest game fish caught by a member of the club on a 39 cord line.

Mr Baldwin has been fishing off the heads for some time. Last week he hooked a huge shark, but lost it after a fight of four hours. He went out on Wednesday with Mr Dick Palmer, official recorder for the New South Wales Rod Fishers’ Society, and had not been out long when he hooked the tiger shark. He said that it gave him surprisingly little trouble in view of its size, and it was evidently very fat and sluggish. There was a dramatic moment when the shark was officially weighed on the tested scales of the society. The recorded weight was 10011 b. The rope which had been used to support the shark was then weighed, and was found to be 4ilb. “ How do you propose to celebrate? ” Mr Baldwin was asked, as he stood surveying the shark. “Celebrate? ” he said. “The best way that I can see is to go out and try to get a bigger one.” Mr Baldwin proposes to try again next week. He will probably have with him Mr Charles Farrell, the film actor. Exi pert fishermen believe that his record will not last long. They say there is ample evidence that there are larger sharks off the New South Wales coast. Mr Baldwin naturally believes that Australia is “a real fisherman’s paradise.” “It must be,” he said, “otherwise I could never catch such a tremendous thing as this.- I’m a greenhorn.” His modesty accepted, Mr Baldwin was reminded that such terrors of the 'deep had an inherent distate of being caught, and to catch a 13footer, full of fight, was not exactly prawning. “I have fished very little in America,” he said, “ and I know nothing about comparative fishing grounds or tackle or methods, but I’ve been rather lucky.” Wednesday’s catch was described by well-known fishermen as a really splendid achievement with regulation tackle, but Mr Baldwin and his companions are sadly certain that a bigger one got away “ with everything except the boat.” Mr Baldwin, who said that the sport was one of the most thrilling and fascinating, caught in 1931, at Russell, New Zealand, the club record thresher shark—29llb—and found out just how furious and contrary this type of fish could be.