Tiger Sharks off Fort Lauderdale
This afternoon we went out fishing with Steve and his girl Melissa from Miami Florida.
As we set out Melissa said how she would love to catch a shark.
I guess they had been watching shark week and had an itch to fight a shark?
The weather was perfect Florida weather with a light chop and a hint of south current.
We started out trolling and catching a few bonitos just to bend the rod and to catch what we were hopping to use to lure in a shark.
After some trolling we switched fishing methods brought in the trolling gear and sent a bonito to the bottom in 350 feet of water and set out a kite with some live bait suspended from it just in case a sailfish or maybe some mahi swam by.
But today it was not the live baits that would pay off for us it was the deep bait on the bottom.
All of a sudden our 130 Penn international bent over and line started peeling off the reel as if it was never going to stop.
Steve jumped in the chair and the fight was on!
After a little while Steve though HEY WAIT A MINIUNT Melissa was the one who said she wanted to fight a shark!!
So we switched anglers and Melissa jumped in the chair for about 3 minuets it did not take long for her to resized that she had bit off a little more than she could chew#%@#$%& (LOL)
Ok back to Steve and the back and forth tug a war went on for a good 45 minutes to and hour.
Than as the lead got to the Rod tip our mate Rusty yelled out (I don’t know what we got here but it is BIG)
Now I know Rusty has fished all over the world from Australia to the Azores and all over the Bahamas he still only weighs about 140 pounds and as I looked at what was coming up I knew this shark was over 500 pounds.
Well needless to say safety first and yep this shark had my attention.
So I yelled down fish has been caught just try to cut leader as close as safely as possible just than the shark took off like a bullet and the fight was on again.
Ok time to regroup here and a little pow wow was has by captain and crew.
The plan was to try to get a couple photos and cut the leader as close as possible to the shark’s mouth.
Next time we got this SEA MONSTER next to the boat he had settled down a bit and we got a better look at this shark and it turned out to be a Tiger Shark well over 500 pounds and as I looked at his tail and yep it was a he for I could see his 2 claspers behind his belly.
We also noticed the top half of his tail was missing.
I truly believe this was the only reason we were able to get him next to the boat.
On a side note my son Luis aboard the Hooked Up 2 had also caught a tiger shark earlier in the week along with another one of the local captains Captain Tommy had also caught one and the fins on the one he had caught were all tour up.
I guess they were down here mating and I guess they mate pretty rough.
WOW what a week of Sharks off the coast of Fort Lauderdale.
Thanks again to our anglers for fishing with us aboard the Hooked Up off the coast of Fort Lauderdale.
Captain Taco 954-764-4344 tacohookedup@aiol.com
