The chum is tossed, if in pieces, or ladled, if a pulp, at appropriate intervals to create a continuous procession, variously called a line, a streak, or a slick. In essence a chum line is a means of communication with fishes that are some distance from the boat. They pick up the scent of that slick and follow it up right near the boat, where baited hooks await them. Chumming in shark fishing increases your chances of contact enormously; a procedure I advocate highly.

Be advised, though, that you won't always see the sharks that your chum has lured. Sometimes they hang around at the far end of the slick, filling their bellies with your handout and refusing to approach baits. Other times they feed along the chum line's deep edge, remaining out sight until they wallop your bait.

In salt-water fishing, you'll hear a lot about mossbunker chum, or "bunker" as it is known by many fishermen. Bunker is usually ground up and is an excellent chum. You can ladle it over the side for sharks, school sized tuna, and giant bluefin tuna, bluefish, mackerel, and other species. It can be bought ready to go in 25-pound cans in a number of sportfishing ports. The alternative is to buy the fish and ground it up yourself. Some fisherman like to grind it up out at sea while fishing, and they install a household meat grinder in the cockpit of their boat.

If mossbunker is not available in your area then go to the next best thing and use menhaden. Just like the bunker, menhaden is another choice of chum and a very oily fish as well. You can again purchase menhaden by the 5-pound boxes of chum, or the menhaden oil in gallons or pints.

The ground menhaden chum can be placed in a chum mesh bag, wire chum cage, or dumped into a five-gallon bucket and mixed with salt water then ladled over the side. The chum bags and cages just hang over the side from a cleat. When using the menhaden oil I like to use a plastic (iv) type of dispenser, like the ones used in hospitals. This is very easy to set up; Just pour a small amount of menhaden oil into the bottle, mix in some salt water and put the cap back on. Then hang the bottle from a cleat and set the flow to your liking, I like a pretty good flow when it comes to the menhaden oil.

Another tip: It isn't necessary to throw the chum is if you were scattering grass seed. Doing it that way will be tiresome and sloppy. Drop it overboard. It will spread by itself. And remember that you'll be chumming into the wind, not on the leeward or sheltered side of the boat. In other words, you'll be chummming on the side of the boat where the wind is pushing her. Why? For one thing, you want to take advantage of a kind of suction effect, the wake, created right alongside the boat on the windward side as it's pushed along. It helps distribute the chum, and you won't get it on the side away from the breeze.

Sometimes it may take anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours for the chum to achieve maximum effectiveness, falling to the oceans floor depending on the local conditions at the time (wind, current, depth etc). And this is notably true if the sharks are feeding on or near the bottom. If the fish are on the surface it's a different story. Then you may get only a ladelful or two of chum over the side before one hits.