Caught a little shark last Sunday and "pulled" his teeth. ALL OF THEM!

About ready to do the second cleaning and wondering what I can do to perserve the jaws and cartiledge. Anyone here ever mount a set of jaws before?

Nope, I was afraid of getting "nicked".

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Laissez les bons temps roulez!

bottom teeth in the third row of the bottom jaw about a 1/4 inch into the tip of my left index finger Sunday afternoon and it hasn't stopped bleeding yet. Cut like a piece of broken old green coke bottle bottom shot with a BB gun.

Cool. It looks like you have done most of the work already. You might consider screwing another board across from that one from hinge to hinge so it don't curl back. Bleach, rinse and let dry, repeat as needed. I use 50/50 non scented and water. Heck you could dip them in a barrel. Get you some pool chlorine it's 10 times stronger than laundry bleach, just use less.

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Dum vivo cano

the jaws enough for the teeth to fall out or eat away what's left of the hinge cartilige?

tks for the advice.
SC

It's cartilage, It dries strong. You can also seal them with a clear coat just make sure they are real dry and cured before hand. I don't seal mine and have mounts 20 years +.

BTW tell me more about the catch........

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Dum vivo cano

Is that a bull shark?

Are you sure that's a "little" shark? It looks hugemongus to me!

We were about 16 miles out of St Andrews on a hard bottom fishing for red grouper and anything else in season with gills. We had a 12" long X 4" round "noodle" for a bouy and we kept watching it go under. We knew the current wasn't strong enough to pull it under so we started to think turtle hung in the line. Then this little feller's dorsal breaks the water right by the bouy so we knew what was playing with it then. Eventually it eased over to the boat and bit down on my stainless prop. When that wasn't tasty he was about to chomp down on my brand new transucer. I couldn't let that happen so I poked him with my rod tip and he eased under the boat and came up on the other side and cruised out of sight. 5 minutes later it was back. It got late and we had our limit of red and gag grouper so we threw the anchor ball over and hauled up the anchor. We then turned to go back and get the bouy and it was gone. Finally it came back up and the shark was around it. I fed it some cut bait and then fed it a 13/0 on some 250# wire. 15 minutes later we were sliding a loop of bow line down over the rod to lasso it. got it lasso'd around the girth and then made a half hitch on the tail and tied it off to a stern cleat and led it around for a few minutes and then rolled it into the boat.

That's all my lawyer will let me say! ;-)

15 minutes, Wow.

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Dum vivo cano

everyone that saw it says it was. Including my lawyer.

that pulled up in my front yard Sunday afternoon in a three colored 1980 Chevy S-10 with three different size tires on it. Seriously though, a "migrant worker" did pull up and ask if his wife could take a picture of his son standing by the shark and I said sure and offered to take a picture of all three of them by it, but he declined to have his picture taken! ?

You been back to wawsaw lately?

pupped. She was really poor as you can see by the picture. Never did make a long or sustained run like a shark that size can and will. We stayed at anchor the whole time. I had 125# main line and had the drag tamped down pretty tight and put my feet up and just held on.

Congratulations! That is a nice fish. That is several pounds of good eating. What size reel were you using. What was the weight and length? It has been a long time but I am thinking that I would wash them in Borax water and then rinse them in Clorox water and then let them dry. Drill a hole in each side close to the hinge and use 2 wood screws to mount on a wide board or a piece of plywood. Easiest to let a taxidermist do it. Larry

The teeth look like a tiger shark's. Almost heart-shaped in many cases.

My father brought me one on a necklace from Hawaii, and I quit wearing the necklace because the tooth'd get caught between my chest and the tee shirt amd I got nicked a few times. Yeah, really.

Look at the dorsal fin and the pectoral and the general color. The long lobe of the upper caudal (tail) fin doesn't show well here, but I think that's a tiger. And pretty emaciated.

But I could be wrong, given the photo and the lighting. Anyone know for sure?

I'd let those ants have at it for a little longer before you try to bleach it. That's what we would do with skulls we wanted to preserve as kids. Skin them scrape as much meat off them as we could and then plop them down on a fire ant pile. 'Course mom would get mad when the wind shifted.......

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Forum consigliere

I was gonna suggest the same. It works like a charm on bone but I'm not so sure about cartilage.

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Dum vivo cano

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

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Thirty characters. Exactly...

I bought a set in the Dominican Republic for $1.25 when I was 12, I'm 64 now, you do the math . It was about the size of yours, and well dried when I got it. I'm not sure just how they preserved it but knowing how poor those fishermen were I doubt they had any sort of bleach or other chemicals so, it was probably stripped by ants then sun dried but I don't know that for sure. while I was a kid the set was mounted on my bedroom wall for about 5 years, then stayed in the garage till 1988 when I screwed it to a piling on the dock (under the roof) at my fishing camp. During Hurricane IKE a couple of years ago most of the dock was washed away but the jaws stayed in place. I brought them inside the camp where they are now. A couple of the teeth are missing now, pulled out by kids but it is in pretty good shape still. The point is these things are pretty doggone tough whether in or out of the shark.
Steve W

Yep, .

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Dum vivo cano

I don't like what you did, but looks like a silky shark to me.

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Jorge

Why? I'm really curious.

Hung up that way, it's hard to tell. And I don't know what silky shark teeth look like. Is the color right? Looks more like a tiger (but no stripes, which may have faded) or a lemon shark.

But the dorsal fin looks like a tiger, too, and that long tail lobe...

Does the OP know what he caught? Its appearance at that time would be a better clue than that photo. I'd also like to know the length.

May we see a closeup photo of the teeth?

Well, if I look at snout, pectoral-, dorsal- and caudal fin as well as jaws, I assume it's a silky shark.

But like you said, it's hard to tell in this picture.

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Jorge