Branded Shark

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 542, 20 December 1928, Page 8

Branded Shark

Escaped and Caught Six Months Later MONSTER IN WAITEMATA To hook a 14-foot tiger shark as far up the harbour as Walker’s Beach and find, on landing it, that it was the same one that he had branded six months previously, was the extraordinary experience of Mr. G. C. Fry, a fisherman, who told his story to a Sun man yesterday. Ever since lie started fishing as a means of livelihood, more than two years ago, Mr. Fry has been troubled by sharks, or in his opinion a shark, tearing up his nets and doing a great deal o,f damage. While out fishing with the yacht Bell, belonging to Mr. T. Tait, of Point Chevalier, last Friday, Mr. Fry put out a shark line and soon got a strong bite. Realising that it would be useless for him and his assistants to attempt to fight the shark while it had its full strength, the fisherman secured the line with two heavy anchors. On the next day early in the afternoon, Mr. Fry set out for the point where he had left his anchors and let down a grapnel to drag for the line. He found that the struggling monster had dragged one anchor 100yds through the mud, the line being wrapped round its body so that the other anchor was practically on top of it. The fish was towed to Oakley Creek, where with great difficulty, four men dragged it above the water. Mr Fry then saw, to his great surprise, that the captured fish was the one branded by him some time before. “Six months ago,!’ said Mr. Fry, “I found a shark struggling and smashing through my nets. I jabbed at him with a pointed iron bar that I carried Cor such emergencies and the point pierced his dorsal fin. I had to let go or he would have dragged me into the water, so he escaped with my bar.” Mr. Fry discovered that the shark he landed in the week-end had a deep scar on the dorsal fin just where he remembered stabbing it. The shark was found to be just over 14ft in length. Its fluke was 2ffc 3in In length and it had a jaw spread of nearly lsin. The problem of disposing of their catch then occupied the successful hunters and it was decided to cut the big fish into sections with a cross-cut saw. They sawed the carcase into eight pieces, chopping through the backbone with an axe, and two men carried each piece up the beach to a big pit, where all traces of this fish story now lie buried.

Mr. Fry is a well-known fisherman living in St. Mary’s Bay Road, Ponsonby.