All season, Frank and I had been discussing about us getting a big shark on film being released, in an effort to boost the sharkfishing.us site. As the summer was coming to a close, we never did get to reach this goal. Frank would always say to me that we were robbed this summer for not being able to do what we had hoped for. So I realized that if Frank and I were going to go out and get this footage, we had to do it soon. I told him that this is the time when the big sharks bite, and unfortunately for me he was slammed with his work at www.hoopnets.com seeing as how lobster season was only a week away. The primary reason I wanted Frank to go was because he is a great cameraman, and this was our goal….to get a big fish being released on film. He then told me that the workload on hoopnets.com was so burdensome, he couldn’t go anytime soon.

It was the week of September 14th, and we were having a heat wave. Throughout the week, looking at the evening red sky, I knew it’d be a good time to go fishing. It had been several weeks since I last went out on the water and I just had to go, no matter what. So I was mentally prepared to go the coming Saturday. I had three and only three things on my mind: getting the footage of a big shark, getting a world’s record, and most importantly just getting out in the water.

I knew though that if I went out by myself my chances of getting good footage of a shark or a record were greatly diminished, let alone the amount of work involved on a single trip.

I made a couple phone calls during the week and couldn’t find anyone to go due to prior commitments. So I decided to go by myself, since I really wanted to go. So on Friday, I asked a couple co-workers of mine if they wanted to come along and they both said yes and were committed and I was shocked. They were both incredibly excited that they were coming along because they had some exposure to shark fishing, but had never been out on the water. I told them to meet me on Saturday morning at their regular work time, 8am to make it easy on them and stress-free for myself, rather than an early morning venture. I prefer to fish sharks in the late afternoon, as I think that’s when the bigger ones come out to feed.

We all arrived at the shop at 8 in the morning and loaded the truck. So I get down to the marina at 9, loaded up the boat, went over to the fuel dock and was greeted by John Collar, aka FloMar (a moderator at Inside Sportfishing). We had a nice chat about our websites and message boards, and my upcoming website, saltwaterfishing.us and my plans to build that into a top-rank, paying website, and he gave me some great pointers.

I left the fuel docks, punched in the 172, checked my temp map one more time and set a course. On the way out, I ran across a lot of life in the bay, consisting of bait, birds, seals, temp breaks, and warm waters. As we went further out we ran across a giant Mulla Mulla. I brought the guys over so they could take a good look at it. Actually, when they first spotted it, the fin was so far out of water and their jaws dropped, as they yelled “shark!” After looking at it for a bit, we moved along and scanned the horizon. I spotted out a whale and they were excited to see that. For every seal and porpoise that we saw, the guys got so excited and had so much fun, they felt like they were on a wild African safari.

When I first arrived at the 172, there was a nice current break, lots of bait balls on the meter, bait puddling, but another boat stopped on it at the same time. So I did nothing for a while. GW Hunter called me on the radio and asked me how I was doing, and I replied to him that I just arrived at the 172, due to a late start. Ron heard this and hailed me and told me that he spent all night in the area for only a few blue sharks and runts. I was discouraged from hearing this, but then I thought about it for a while. If he chummed the area last night, where would it be now? I came to the realization that it must have been miles away by now, and so I felt assured about sticking in my area. Besides, I really couldn’t go out any further, seeing as how one of my guys was chumming his breakfast over the side. 20 minutes had passed since I arrived and I took another look around the area, noticing that the other boat had left. So I started the chum system and the motors, laying down a half mile slick. Then I turned the motors off and set the rods.

Setting up the rods consisted of 2, 80 wides with 80lb test and 30 foot wire leaders with bullet tunas pinned on 14/0 hooks. One dunked over the side and one on a balloon. I came prepared for a big beast. The only other shark rod and reel that I brought was a shotgun rig, which consisted of a custom Calstar 765XL 20-50lb graphite rod with Fuji SIC/USG guides and a Penn 16S 2 speed reel, customized by The Fishin’ Fools

I highly recommend you get a couple of these incredible rods. As you can see in the video, this rod was able to bend into a u-shape, while we were on a monster fish. The rod guides can dissipate heat from the line, since there are no roller guides.

I climbed the tower to look for some sharks, and within a short period of time, a small blue swam into the slick. I wanted to get the guys hooked on something, and we baited and hooked it with the shotgun rig. One of the boys fought it and brought it in and released it.

As I was preparing to go back up the tower to spot again, trying not to be discouraged with one guy puking his brains out and the best thing we’d come up with was a 3 foot blue shark, I caught a glimpse with the corner of my eye, a distinct, darting Mako shadow off one side of the stern of the boat. At first it seemed to be only a 50 or 80 lb Mako, so I grabbed the un-baited shotgun rig in my hand, looked some more, and saw nothing. So I pulled a roughhouse move and jumped up on the bait tank to look down on the pee-green soup. After looking for a while and seeing nothing, I jumped down. After waiting a few more minutes, the Mako crashed on the balloon on the far rig. At this point, I am assuming the Mako had investigated both tunas and remained uninterested. I grabbed the short rod, knowing the Mako was a good size, and tried to make the tuna look alive. Now I see the shark for the third time, dart across the slick, down deep. I’m now estimating that it’s 200 to 300 lbs. I realized the shark wasn’t interested in these tunas, and figured I’d bait it with the shotgun rig, and let the guys prepare for the fight of their life. The setup was a 50lb spectra, 100 yards of 100lb test, wind on leader, 3ft, 240 lb wire leader with a 7/0 Mustad welded eye hook.

I pinned on a mackerel, threw it on right where I saw the shark and he immediately picked it up. So I tried to get a quick hook set but ended up pulling a mackerel out of his teeth, with some really big teeth marks. I immediately pinned on another mackerel and flipped it back, and once again he picked it up right away. This time the shark swam at the boat, and I waited for him to turn his head and swim away, and then I immediately set the hook. The shark took off as if nothing had even happened. As soon as it had taken some line out and applied some back pressure, it realized that it was hooked and started to scream the reel. I realized that this fish was going to have to be chased, so I had one of the guys get the motors going. We turned the boat around and began chasing the fish. I went with one of the guys to the bow and decided to let the guys fight the fish. After I handed him the rod the fish took off on a long run. For some reason he thought that he needed to pull the lever back and so the reel back lashed, and we almost lost the fish. I was able to fix the problem and recover from it. At this point I proceeded to fight the fish to show the guys how to use the gear, since they had never done it before.

When I was done showing them how to fight the fish with the rod and reel, I handed back the rod (kind of like on the job training). For the first hour of chasing the fish into the sun, the three of us took turns with the rod. The fish made numerous runs, submerging into the water and riding along the surface, and they were so spectacular that I was just waiting for it to go airborne and get some footage, as the camera was rolling.

I asked the guys a couple times, as you will see on the film if they wanted to keep the fish or let it go. Neither of them really understood the concept of releasing, and so they said to catch it. I was also thinking about how nice it would be to stock the freezers for the rest of the year. At the same time I was thinking about how this would be the perfect opportunity to get some grade A footage of a catch and release, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. I really wanted to sink one of my new gaffs into something, and this was definitely a sizeable fish, but getting the video up for the sharkfishing.us website seemed to take precedence. As you’ll see in the video I kept 2 fly gaffs readied in the stern, prepared for use in case I decided to catch it.

Late into the 3rd or 4th hour I made up my mind that I would rather catch some video of the fish. The final decision was based upon the fact that they hadn’t earned the right to capture such a fish, just for some meat and pictures. Either way, they will thoroughly enjoy themselves, and I’d come home with plenty of footage and photos. I decided not to tell either of the guys about my decision, because I didn’t want them to give up or lose hope. Once I made this decision, I took the fly gaffs and hung them in their stowed position, as you can see later in the video.

I made the decision of bringing this fish to the boat, so I took over the helm, but at the same time the videotaping. I wished one of the other guys could have filmed, but due to them being unable to properly operate the camera, I had to take it upon myself. Actually I had to duct tape down the zoom button on the camera so that they wouldn’t keep adjusting it, as they had been doing for the past 45 minutes (which left me with 45 minutes of good footage afterwards.) I knew at this point I couldn’t afford to risk any more poor footage, and so I was very worried about getting the money shot on the release, so I didn’t have much of a choice other than to film and navigate myself. I had one guy on the line and one taking stills.

I didn’t want either of the guys to leader the fish, due to their lack of any experience. I also didn’t want to see anyone get hurt or possibly even killed, not knowing what they were doing. Of course with me being at the helm and filming, I couldn’t do it myself. I yelled at the rod man to pump the rod as hard as he could, to get the fish over to the boat. I overworked him, the rod, and the gear trying to get some good footage. I was driving the boat alongside the shark getting footage for a couple minutes, until it darted away. So I needed to get the boat closer to the shark, and repeatedly yelled to the rod man to short pump the rod and bring the shark alongside the boat.

We repeated the process several times and each time the shark came to the boat it went down. In actuality it would have been really easy to just grab the leader and bring it in, but for the sake of getting video we did this instead.

Finally when the shark had had enough we decided it was time to let it go. I left the camera hanging on my neck and grabbed the line pulling the shark towards the surface. At this point the shark rolled over to the side to look at me, and I saw the underbelly of this shark and realized it was a monster! From the back of my mind I knew that this fish had a bigger fight than the 515 I caught recently, but didn’t imagine it would be as big as it was. I knew at this moment this was the shark I wanted to get on film. I also knew that if I kept grabbing the line there would be trouble.

I ran back to the helm, made an adjustment on the wheel and outfitted myself and the sick guy with a set of gloves, to try and lift the shark to the side of the boat for the money shot, which is a risky thing to do with a 700 lb shark. I was pretty convinced though that if we could pull it to the boat, I could get some great footage. In the haste of the whole situation, I didn’t realize it would have been better for me to pull the shark and let the sick guy film. I was kind of deterred from letting the sick guy film because of the difficulties he and the rod man had with the camera throughout the trip. Had Frank been with me this wouldn’t have been a problem at all. But what I didn’t realize until later was that apart from the 45 minutes where the camera was zoomed in and out of focus, they had taken some beautiful footage.

I tried one more time to tell the sick guy to pull the line and told the rod man to step back. I had one hand on the line and the other on the camera. The sick guy was see-sawing the line against the side of the boat, while I was trying to keep it away from the boat and yelling at him to pull the line to keep it away from the boat, but in his weak physical state he couldn’t do it. So the line rubbed alongside the boat for the last time, and snapped!

I so badly wanted to put the knife to the line but either way it’s just the same. I had gotten what I had come out here for, and was able to go home happy with what I had accomplished: Some great footage of this shark, and the opportunity to take two guys who had never been in the water before, and show them the time of their life.