Thread: Kayaker and great white shark

Auckland Harbour in my Kayak a few years ago: I was anchored and catching a few fish and I had Conger Eel bleeding out over the side. Conger Eels are good in soups and stews. As they're slimy and take forever to die, and really mess up the Kayak, I developed the method using a lip grabber on them and slitting the throat, and dangling them over the side to bleed out until dead, no mess Charlie.

I'm anchored, stern to the current and looking downstream, I see a little triangular fin, zig zagging its way towards me, about 20 metres away. Obviously it had scented the Eel. Great I thought, a little shark, I'll get my steel trace on.

As I did so the shark got closer and closer. Then the little fin got about a foot tall...

Adrenalin time.

I whipped the eel aboard and into a plastic bag, and hoped there was no blood coming out of my scuppers.

It was a large female Bronze Whaler, as fat as a fat thing, obviously in the harbour to pup.

She came up to the Kayak and circled it, 4 or so times and now there was no blood in the water, lost interest and went. Thank god, I didn't want to see what would happen if she took an interest in the Kayak.

As she went wound the Kayak I watched, as her tail got level with my stern I whipped my head around to see her head near my bow, so a reasonable estimate is 12~13 ft long, given my Kayak is 14 ft.

And fat as a bulldozer.