Fastest Fish

I wonder how they were able to measure the speed?

Ive caught several mako,s off the Cal. coast years ago when shark fishin wasn,t as popular as it is today and thought at the time WOW do they haul or what,now I know thanks
Rob
Seems high for a Blue shark

One more faux scientific method

Whistler, you know how people complain about the wind a Christmas Island? Messes up their casts, they say. Well, I found that wind can be your friend over there. It agitates the surface so much that those bonefish can't hear the fly drop near them (if you're casting into the wind).

I remember one still evening when bonefish were tailing all around us. You could almost hear them smacking their lips as they worked the bottom. But drop a fly anywhere near them and it looked like rain out there. One group would spook another all the way down for a hundred yards. What looked like perfect conditions was actually pretty tough. That was before I learned to tie flies without the eyes.

Yeah, those trevally are always following you looking for an easy meal. Sometimes you release a bonefish and those big brutes just rush in.

They're some big barracuda on that island also (although I've never seen one). One of the guys was telling me of a six foot fish rushing at him while wading that just stopped inches away before turning. Wet wading took on a different meaning that day ( ). I can't imagine what that fish was thinking as nothing was being released at the time.

Yes, but can you outrun a mako shark ...

Yahoo search says Indo-Sailfish is fastest.

The Indo-Pacific Sailfish is an oceanic species that feeds on schooling fishes such as sardines, anchovies and mackerels.

The feeding behaviour has been observed by fishermen as follows: "when one or several sailfish found a school of prey fishes, they began to pursue it at about half speed with their fins half-folded back into the grooves. They then drove at the prey at full speed with their fins completely folded back and once they had caught up with it, they suddenly made sharp turns with their fins fully expanded to confront a part of the school and then hit the prey with the bill.

Subsequently they ate the killed and stunned fish, usually head first."

That's the fastest fish when it is doing it's natural thing....but in the world of angling:

Hook up a sailfish and it loses a lot of speed and power. Hook up a mako and it sustains higher speeds and is infinitely more powerful.

A great race to watch would be this:
a flying fish..being chased by a dorado...being chased by a marlin.

Great thread,did some googleing on the subject and came away with nothing more than we started with!

To get a valid test you would have to get the fish to cooperate to the following.

1 run in a straight line,no turns.
2 run at top speed for say 100 yd,s
3 make sure you don,t jump and so on

More questions what weight line will we use?

How much pressure do we apply to said line?

The fish would have to be at their best fighting weight,water temp would have to be factored in

One site I visited did not have the Mako in the top 10?

So after more thinking and reading I came to the conclusion IMHO a valid test could not be set up to being with

The Mako of the Cal. coast generally perfer cooler water than the SOC offers but who knows?
Rob

BajaBruno.. Personally, I have never caught, or 'postively seen', a mako this far north (off Bahia de Concepcion) into the Sea of Cortez. I have read accounts of it happening. Once, about 10 years ago, I 'thought' we had a mako hook-up on a fast feather while out for tuna...but the strike, jump, and break-off was way to fast for a positive ID. Funny acedote about that event: My visiting buddy from North Dakota saw that shark hit, jump, and bust the line..then turned to me and said.."I don't want to catch anything that big!"

http://topp.org/blog/interview_mako

The makos we do see are the MAKO CC's..nice boats.

Lots of other types here...50-60 different types of sharks and rays....including great whites and threshers. Along this line, a totally new species of shark was discovered in 2003-indentified via DNA in 2006- by a young Mexican marine biologist aboard a research vessel.

Caught in very deep water, the new shark is about 5 feet long and was named, "Mustelus hacat," after the word for shark in a local Indian dialect. Dark in color, like dark coffee, and have white markings on the tips and edges of their fins and tails. This was the first shark discovery in the Sea of Cortez since the tiny Mexican Horn Shark was identified in 1972.


The Mustelus hacat lives in the ocean's depths feeding on shellfish and shrimp. They have very, very small teeth. They are not aggressive or dangerous...and most likely not a very fast fish.

Mako,s are damn scary critters,I only had a 16" boat at the time and not much free-board so its a up close and personal thing when you land a fish

We ate the smaller models,very good on the grill by the way but on several occassions hooked some biggies that were really scary,when jumping they may come out and do a 360 or come straight up an land tail first you never knew,did alot of chasing as you might amagine,had a bad habit of jumping very close to the boat which was just to much for us to handle mentally,fearsome looking things.

We cut off more than one:lol
Rob

Wow that must have been a chore fishing out of a 16" boat.

tnx baitcast