Posted on 10/15/2007 2:25:19 AM PDT by jsh3180
DESTIN – Adlee Bruner’s fishing story is about the big one that didn’t get away.
Bruner and five friends headed out Saturday morning on a charter boat, hoping to catch some grouper to enter in the annual Destin Fishing Rodeo.
Instead, Bruner landed a gargantuan 844.4-pound mako shark, setting a new record for the decades-old tournament.
“It was tense,” Bruner, 47, said about the fight to land the 11-foot shark with a mouthful of huge teeth. “I’ve fished for 40 years. I’ve never see one that big.”
Bruner and his fishing buddies were on the 52-foot charter boat “Twilight” with Capt. Robert Hill of Destin and deckhand Eric Hayles.
"We were precisely 70 miles southwest of Destin,” Hill said. “In beautiful blue water. It was about 280 feet deep.”
The fishermen first noticed the big mako because it kept eating grouper and scamp they had hooked.
“I told them to bring up their rigs,” Hill said.
When the rigs came up, the big shark surfaced just behind the boat.
“A huge shark,” Bruner said.
“That was an incredible sight,” Hill said. “You sort of run around not knowing what to do, it was so big.
“It was like ‘Jaws.’ ”
Hill hooked a two-foot amberine on as bait and tossed it out. The rig included a stout fiberglass rod and a Shimano PLD 50 reel custom built at Destin’s Half-Hitch Tackle, with 100-lb. test line and a steel leader.
About 10 minutes after the bait was in the water, at 12:20 p.m., the shark hit about 200 feet from the boat, and the fight was on.
“He went to the bottom for about 30 minutes,” Hill said of the shark. “(Then) it just decided to come up to the surface.”
Bruner was not strapped in to a chair as he battled the huge fish.
“I was standing up the whole time,” he said.
When the shark surfaced, Hill backed the boat up to it. That is when things got tense, Bruner and Hill said.
“My deckhand (Hayles) was the most courageous of all,” Hill said. “He reached out there and gaffed him. He’s the one who knew the fish wasn’t worn down. He’s tough.”
“He went crazy,” Bruner said of the shark. “It was a fight.”
At one point the rope attached to the gaffe wrapped around the boat’s rudder and began to fray. But after 10 minutes they were able to get another rope around the shark’s tail.
“Once we had the tail roped, we had him,” Hill said. Still, it took about an hour for the fish to succumb.
But then a challenge arose.
“We couldn’t get him in the boat,” Bruner said. “We tried for about an hour, but we couldn’t pick him up.”
Eventually, they tied the shark to the stern with three ropes and began the trip back to land.
Hill, who’s been a charter captain since 1985, said his boat ran full out the entire way back, but the journey still took more than four hours to reach Destin Harbor.
The shark was hoisted up at the rodeo before a big crowd. It tipped the scale at 844.4 pounds. After it was gutted, the mako still weighed 638 pounds – breaking the tournament’s previous shark division record by 338 pounds.
Bruner said the shark eclipsed the size of any fish he’s ever caught before.
“I’ve caught an 85-pound Warsaw (grouper) before,” he said. “This is a totally different fish here.”
Bruner, who is self-employed from Bruce, Fla., and has fished many other times with Hill, said it’s also likely the only time he’ll ever land and keep a big shark.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time we catch sharks and let them go. (But) it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Hill concurred.
“This is the biggest thing I’ve ever seen or caught myself.
“Basically, when you have good customers who’ve been fishing for something like this for years, you can’t pass it up.
“We normally catch and release all sharks. This was a special occasion just because of the size. And it was a rodeo record.
“There’s people that fish all their lives and never see anything like that.”
Nah. I was up there in early Sept, a little too early, but I did go bluefishing. A fellow I used to mate with (waiting for snide comments...)now has his own party boat and I sailed with him.
Won the pool!!! (it went to the mate)
I thought we would get bluefishing in this season; but my kids haven’t satisfied me with their swimming skills yet.
I hope to get us all out on the party boats next season.
Hopefully, we will make it to the inlet again before it gets too cold this season.
Scary that someone would be against the killing of a shark for any reason.
Animals are animals, people are people.
Humans were created to be over animals.
Animals a renewable commodity, just like walnuts that fall from a tree.
Save the shark, kill a lawyer instead.
Environmental conservatism is a conservative principle.
You don’t shoot does or pregnant deer when you go hunting, do you?
Remember, Ronald Reagan wanted to save the whales.
Agreed. But, help me out here, how do you tell the difference?
I’ll bet he was thinking about The Great Dimagio as he he was fighting the fish.
You want to read some crazy stuff? Relink to the actual article and look at the comments. WOW...
Big fisherman.
That actually should have read “fawns or pregnant does”.
Can someone lend me a cup of coffee?
I guess its better than
Person
150lbs of person (more or less is OK)
wetsuit (optional-maybe eaten or removed)
surfboard-also optional, watch for fiberglass splinters, which won't bother you you're a shark for chrissakes...
lots of salt water
Catch fresh, eat whole or in bites. Cooking is not needed
Serves 1, may be shared if needed.
No kidding. My favorite rebuttal to the animal-rights gang:
"The shark is actually the 'bait', not the victim. The sport was to lure whining, bleeding heart PETA vegetarians to chime in with the utter contempt and disdain. That way, the normal people among us could gawk, stare, point, and laugh at their stated and utterly moronic 'feelings'. It certainly appears from the posted comments that it worked."
As a former surfer/bodyboarder, there aren’t words to express how much I hate sharks. That being said, I fail to see what killing this fish accomplished.
The pups are small enough to filet and grill on the BBQ. Tender and delicious using your spices.
Sharks & shysters for all their shared behavior the first (& best) distinction between the two is visual.
A shark looks like a fish while lawyers appear radically different.
...akin to a leech.
If it's attacking from the front, it's a shark.
There's nothing in this article to indicate that any of these fishermen were lawyers, thus there was no requirement or obligation for them to extend professional courtesy...
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