It's a blue shark!

[Jennie@ifish]

Sent in by Marie, Tillamook Bait
A 33 pound Blue Shark @ 36 inches in length was caught off the Oregon Coast today using herring from Tillamook Bait Company.

They were out 27 miles Halibut fishing when they landed this beautiful Blue Shark.

When it hit the bait it hit with extreme strength! It took about 1/2 hour to get it in.

Fishermen was Gary Klinger Jr. (Pictured) from Salem.

[Deepslayer]

It doesn't look like he planned on eating the shark. I notice it is still whole.

When we used to catch shark in San Diego, the blues were always killed and gutted immediately! And then the lower belly skin was cut off before we rinsed the whole inside cavity out, usually in the ocean.

After all of this the meat was quite good - not as good as a mako. If we didn't do this it was barely fit for cat food!

[img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

Mako and Thresher sharks are the best eating, according to seafood chefs. The reason you have to clean them immediately after clubbing them is because sharks have the unique characteristic of emptying their urea wastes out from the bladder when they die and much of it is absorbed into the meat. Yuke. When they are cleaned correctly right away they can be very good; although I haven't eaten blue shark though; only the Thresher in restaurants. ...

Speaking of sharks, I was fishing with Salmon Shark out of Depot Bay during one of the El Nino' warm water years, and while we were trolling herring for coho in my V-sled he hooked a large 6 ft. blue shark that didn't even fight as Chris slowly worked him in near the boat. Really intriguing to see. We were trying to decide if we wanted to try killing that large of a shark when it made the decision for us by sawing off the leader with it's teeth; and slowly swam off. That was cool!

RT