Aussie fishermen declare open season on bull sharks following death of schoolboy Nico Antic and spate of attacks

"Drums won’t work. A bull shark cull won’t work. Let the commercial fisherman have free rein for five years…"

It was the wildest four days I can remember, five bull shark hits, one kid dead, a surfer left without a crucial supporting limb.

Shortly after schoolboy Nico Antic was hit and killed by a bull shark at the jump rock just around the corner from the Sydney Harbour beach Nielsen Park, the Newcastle shark fisherman Joel Nancarrow drove his lil tinny two hours south and dragged a half-ton bull out of the drink just off the beach at Camp Cove, a few beaches east, to show the world how populous bulls had become.

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In response to all the attacks, the state government did what politicians do and threw millions, four point two of ’em, at the problem, in this case, pursuing non-lethal solutions.

Which means, more shark tagging, more drones, some signs and a mobile education van.

Of course, nothing quite works like gettin’ out there in y’boat and draining the joint of bull sharks.

The well-regarded biz coach and public speaker Chris Allchin knows how to get it done, posting photos of his bull shark catch on social media.

“The boys and I set out to catch something big in Sydney Harbour yesterday and we certainly did! This was my first experience being harnessed and chained to a fishing rod with a 150kg shark at the other end. I had a couple of mates holding me back from being pulled into the ocean but After a 4 hour wait and then 30 min of chaos we caught what the fisheries described as an 18-20 year old Bull Shark.
We donated the shark to the fisheries for research purposes.”

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In Cronulla, an hour south of Sydney Harbour, a group of teenagers landed a ten-footer off the beach.

“Hooked onto the shark on a boat at Salmon Haul, it was then taken to the sand after a tough fight on the fishing rod where five boys dragged it up onto the sand at Darook Beach.

“They had an eel on the hook as bait and they were struggling to get it in since it was huge and pulling away from the boat.”

And, earlier today, Joel Nancarrow wrote a treatise on the subject of getting the bull shark population down. It makes for an interesting if confronting sort read.

Did my own, “science” this week!!!!!!

Finally home after a massive week of trying to prove a bit of a point that these tags they are talking about won’t do anything except provide a bit more of a false sense of security to the public that are looking for a safety blanket.

So it started with me going Sydney and catching a bullshark at camp cove within 2 hours.

From there I went up to yamba, and got one off a beach up that way.

After that I came home for a night and went straight back upto Forster where we flew a drone out and got multiple 4/5 bull sharks on the drone only 50/80m from a lot of swimmers and surfers. All the swimmers were alerted, unfortunately there was way to many people on the water to drop a bait on any of these sharks at the time and risk being made out to be the bad guy, the wife’s mate from up that way is doing some amazing things on the drone and she is getting some incredible footage, the amount of bull sharks close to swimmers/kids/surfers yesterday was an eye opener even for me, they all say just out the back of the break and would occasionally come in and move back out, this is what I get worried about as if that switch flicks, we have results like we had last week!!!!!!

I’ve been asked about the “new” tagging program, and it’s not any different from the one that they have now, they want to tag more bull sharks, what is it going to accomplish? People don’t have their phones on them while swimming, the government regulated drumlines are ineffective on bulls, they are going to start in rivers now and the majority of sharks are on the beaches and have already swam past every drumline they have along the coast without being caught.

These same researches that have been calling us trouble makers for years are now wanting information from us on the sharks that they spend millions of dollars from grants on studying in the first place.

This is how it is going to go, they will get these lines in the water, late season, the bulls leave in winter, there will be no attacks due to the sharks naturally being up north and they will call it a success and hope it’s all forgotten about by next summer.

These ridiculous wastes of money don’t work, they just tick boxes on paperwork and help them get more grants, it’s all about employment.

You can see we got them on the north coast, the south coast and in the middle yesterday, this was to prove they are on EVERY beach in between as well. It cost about $1000 in fuel and food and shows they are there all the time.

Drums won’t work. A cull won’t work. Let the commercial fisherman have free rein for 5 years and if it doesn’t make a difference, I’ll give the whole game up.

All very heady stuff.

Are you for the kills or for the mobile education van approach?

Or a little killin’, a little education etc?