Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
From black drum to bluefish, yellowtail to rockfish, chumming is a technique used to attract and catch many different types of fish in many different parts of the world. For at least the next month there is going to be a lot of chumming going on off the coast off Delmarva and it’s a pretty safe bet that most of it is going to be done by folks who are trying to catch sharks.
Even though sharks are sometimes caught without the use of any chum at all, most anglers will probably agree that chumming so greatly enhances the chance of enticing a shark onto their hook that few would even think of heading out on a shark trip without bringing along something to chum with. But even though almost all shark fishermen will tout the benefits of chumming, there has always been a measure of disagreement among the ranks concerning the details of what it takes to produce the most effective chum slick.
Before leaving the dock, anyone planning to spend a part of their day chumming for sharks (or any fish for that matter) will have to decide how much chum they will need for the time they’ll be fishing, what type of chum they’ll use and how they will deploy it. Knowing how much chum to use pretty much comes with experience. Whether it’s bunker, bluefish, mackerel or a mix of unspecified species, what type of chum you use is usually dictated by what the local shops have for sale. Even if you make your own chum, you’ll be at the mercy of what you or other fishermen have recently caught.
Because it is readily available, inexpensive and produces a very visible surface slick, bunker has always been one of the most commonly used fish for chum and is often available for sale at local tackle shops. Some shops also carry mackerel chum, usually at a premium price, which some anglers are willing to pay for since some consider it to be more tempting to sharks. In some cases a more generic chum is sold, which is pretty much a mix of fish species of whatever the fish house was processing at the time.
So what’s best? Personally, if forced to choose from the three types of chum I just mentioned I would choose mackerel, mixed fish and bunker – in that order. I’d go with the mackerel first because they’re in the scombridae family, which is the same family as the tunas and seems to be a real favorite of sharks. Although bunker chum can also be effective for sharks, it’s such a messy chum to work with that I avoid using it when I can, and seeing (or not seeing) the classic bunker-oil slick on the water is of no concern to me and I don’t think to the sharks either.
When it comes to “how much” chum to use, I’ve got some good news - and bad news. The good news is that if you shark fishermen out there would follow my advice you would save a lot of money on chum. The bad news is that probably 99% of you won’t follow my advice! Consider how much chum you use during a normal day of sharking; a 5-gallon bucket, two buckets, even more? How about the additives – do you also “sweeten” the chum by chunking up fish to throw out as added attractant? I’ve got news for you, when it comes to attracting sharks to your boat that you want to eat your baits – more is NOT better!
Anglers should never underestimate the olfactory system of sharks, which allows them to pick up on scents REALLY well, and it doesn’t take much more than a little trickle in the water for sharks to recognize that food is ahead and bring them in to investigate. Flood the water with a huge cloud of chum supplemented with chunks of cut up fish and you run the risk of sharks, that otherwise might have come up to your baits, simply hanging back and slurping down the free handouts. I like to put out just enough chum to grab the sharks interest and then make sure that any bite-size food that goes into the water has a hook in it. I freeze my chum in one gallon bags and figure that at the proper rate of flow, one bag will last about 4-hours. So, depending upon whether we’re fishing a full or half day, I’ll bring one or two gallons of chum and that’s it! Like I said, most anglers won’t take my advice because everyone seems to think that more is better.
It almost seems that shark anglers like to make things difficult on themselves because when it comes to deploying chum, too many are stuck using the antiquated method of putting their chum buckets upside-down in a milk crate with floats around it. This system will work but it’s so much overkill. A simple 5-gallon bucket with a single small hole about the size of a quarter in the lid is all that’s needed. Tie a rope to the handle of the bucket. Put a frozen one-gallon block of chum in the bucket and fill the bucket 3/4 full of water. Put the lid on the bucket and the bucket in the water. The air pocket in the bucket will make it float upside down and the chum will slowly leach out of the lid at the proper rate. It couldn’t be any simpler or effective for deploying the chum.
After more than 40-years of shark fishing, I’m guessing that I’ve tried just about every chumming gimmick you can imagine, from chicken blood to I-V drippers, tiger shark livers to cages filled with tuna carcasses, and in this mid-Atlantic area nothing has been as consistent at bringing in hungry sharks as a slow steady flow of ground-up chum. There is a little bit of science to chumming as well as a little bit of art, but it’s not rocket science and it’s not like trying to paint a Picasso. Keep it simple, keep it light and you’ll see the best result from your efforts.
Capt. Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat, “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
