Anglers hook biggest shark by rod and reel ever off Marina
By DARIEN MURRAY
John Miller of Venice — fishing Saturday aboard John Romanak's Owens 33-foot sportfisher — hooked up the biggest mako shark ever reported caught on rod and reel in Santa Monica Bay.
Caught during a tag and release tournament, the mako weighed 632 pounds.
Miller "fought standing-up style for an hour and five minutes, wearing a rod belt," Keith Lambert, Miller's gaffer, said later, adding:
"I was putting water on his reel when it got hot and giving John water to drink when he was parched."
Miller caught the mako on a 50-pound test line with a Penn 114 reel.
"It was about all that reel could handle," Lambert observed.
"John had the biggest rod and reel wire and hook of all the men on the boat. If the mako had hit any of the other rigs, it would have been on 30-pound test line and would have taken a lot longer to get on the boat."
If the big fish had gotten on the boat at all, Lambert might have added.
And "on the boat" turned out to be only the tail of the mako on the boat's swim step, with six fishermen chugging along 15 miles to home very slowly.
This was the kind of fishing adventure that populates the dreams of sport fisherman — the search for the prey, the hooking up, then the excitement turning to terror as the big fish battles its opponents.
This was a "tag and release" tournament but nobody aboard Bait and Switch volunteered to stick the clip and rope with measuring points up against the beast's jaws, to begin measuring its length. Likewise, the anglers declined to attempt to remove the hook and release the ferocious shark.
Since they were fishing in a no-money-prizes tournament, it became an easy decision to forego an engraved plate and instead cart home hundreds of dollars worth of meat.
This was a tournament called Sharkin' Online, created by "two guys who have a Web page," Lambert said, recalling that there were ten teams of anglers seeking "lots of prizes, including one from a company making a new type of release mechanism for getting the hook out" of the shark.
But, "This fish was so huge and aggressive, it made a flip clear out of the water, eight feet into the air, when it was about 20 feet from the transom," Lambert said.
"Someone said, 'Let's move'."
Then the shark jumped clean out of the water and did a full flip when
it was about 60 feet off the boat, while Miller struggled to...
