Leopard Sharks, The South Bay’s Hard Fighting Predators   By: Dan Bacher September 26, 2006 More Articles by Dan

Though halibut, striped bass and sturgeon elicit the most angling excitement in San Francisco and San Pablo bays during the summer and fall, leopard sharks offer a great light tackle opportunity for anglers looking to fish in relative solitude.

The bay – a nursery for a variety of shark species – also produces spiny dogfish, brown smoothhounds, soupfin sharks, sevengill sharks and the rare jet black sixgill sharks.

The south bay, with its warm water conditions during the summer and fall, offers some of the most consistent fishing for sharks. After making a trip to the south bay about 3 miles off the Oakland International Airport, Allen Bonslett, publisher of the Fish Sniffer was absolutely stoked by the sizzling action that he found fishing with his wife, Nicky, and his children, Derek and Elizabeth.

“We caught 27 sharks while fishing the outgoing tide and the beginning of the incoming,” he stated. “Our largest fish was 58 inches and all of the leopards were keepers. We released all of the fish except two leopards that we kept to eat.”

All of the fish were leopards except one brown smoothhound. They caught the fish while fishing midshipmen, the best bait to use if you want to target just leopards. They found the “hot spot” when Elizabeth Bonslett saw a bunch of fish on the graph.

After rescheduling trips a couple of times, we set up Monday, August 28 as a staff shark fishing day. After slogging through the morning traffic from Elk Grove, we arrived at the San Leandro Marina before 8 am. Allen Bonslett and Fish Sniffer staffers Alexandra Firth and Nannette Hart were in Allen’s boat, while Cal Kellogg, Fish Sniffer Associate Editor, and I were in Cal’s Jet Craft 1825.

After launching the boats and going through the channel at the entrance of the marina, we headed to Allen’s “honey hole,” anchoring up in 23 feet of water. Allen, Alexandra and Nan put out midshipmen, as did I, but Cal decided to toss out sardines. We had arrived at around slack tide, so our boats swung around before the incoming tide began gaining momentum.

Cal was the first to hook up. He brought in a couple of brown smoothhounds, followed by two small sevengills he released. I wasn’t getting any bites on the midshipmen, so I decided to switch over to sardines. After I put on the sardines, I began finally getting hit, hooking a barely legal leopard that I released and a brown smoothound.

Meanwhile, I looked over at Allen’s boat and saw Nanette hooked into a big, bad leopard. After Allen took a bunch of photos, Nan released the hefty fish back into the bay. We saw Alexandra hook and lose a leopard.

A little later, I caught and kept the only fish we kept that day, a 46 inch leopard that took the hook deep. Cal followed up that fish with another leopard shark that he released.

The bite slowed down for Cal and me, but Alexandra managed to land a leopard shark, her first-ever, followed by a leopard caught by Allen. By the day’s end, they had landed six leopard sharks to 55 inches, all quality fish.

Cal and I caught a total of four leopard sharks, releasing all but one, as well as releasing two sevengills and four brown smoothounds. The sardines definitely produced the most action and variety, while the midshipmen yielded the best quality leopard sharks.

Although the bite was nowhere near as hot on the previous day that Allen and his family fished the south bay, we definitely experienced a lot of action throughout our trip. One big bonus was that we were able to fish the bay in virtual solitude, with no other boats fishing anywhere near us.

The increasingly good leopard shark action by anglers in San Francisco Bay is largely due to the size limit of 36 inches and bag limit of 3 fish that was instituted on leopard sharks by the California Fish and Game Commission in 1991.

John Beuttler, then executive director of United Anglers of California, and Barry Canevaro, then head of the organization’s Shark Committee, pressured the Commission to adopt a leopard shark size limit of 40 inches and two fish, but they decided to approve the existing size limit of 36 inches and bag limit of 3. Up until that time, there was no size or bag limit on leopard sharks, so this was a huge improvement over previous shark “management.”

Although United Anglers tried to get the commission to adopt a size limit for seven gill sharks of 60 inches, the Commission failed put a size limit on the big cow sharks, as Canevaro was hoping for. At the same time the leopard shark bag and size limits were imposed, UAC supported a proposal by the Pelagic Shark Foundation to make the Great White Shark a protected species with no take allowed.

“The leopard shark is an exciting fish to catch,” commented Canevaro, a pioneer in light tackle shark fishing for bay sharks, who now only does only occasional shark charters. “When I shark fish, I fly line with midshipmen in shallow water never deep than 7 feet.”

Leopard sharks are distributed from Mazatlan, Mexico to Oregon. In the San Francisco Bay/Estuary they are found primarily in the more marine areas. Most are resident with some movement out of the Bay occurring during the fall. Leopard sharks are fished both commercially and recreationally, with the recreational fishery accounting for the majority of the catch, according to the DFG.

Leopard and other sharks are known for their slow growth rates and for producing just small numbers of pups when they spawn, so catch and release is highly advised by Canevaro and other anglers. If you do decide to keep a shark or two for the table, make sure that you bleed and gut them immediately otherwise the meat will go bad. Sharks excrete through their skin, so if you don’t bleed and gut the fish, the meat will taste terrible.

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