Michael Hengel and his dad, Chuck, had an eventful night within the Florida surf on Feb. 12. Standing on the seaside of Virginia Key at sundown, they hooked an enormous bull shark that might have doubtlessly damaged the state file. It was darkish by the point Hengel landed the shark, and despite the fact that they estimated it weighed round 550 kilos (the present state file is 517), he determined to chop it free.
“I knew this shark had to be well over the state record,” Hengel instructed the Miami Herald. “I can dead-lift 500 pounds, but I couldn’t move it.”
The Allure of Battling Sharks from the Beach
Hengel, 22, tells Outdoor Life that he’s been fishing for sharks since he was 13 years previous, when he first noticed an angler land a shark on the seaside at Sanibel Island. He additionally tends to get seasick, so he’s at all times most well-liked surf fishing to fishing from a ship.
“I just love it,” he stated. “With the boat, you can follow [the shark] around when it’s pulling you. But on the beach, it’s you versus the shark.”
The lifelong Minnesotan explains that his household spends winter holidays on Captiva Island, the place they’ll escape the snow and ice that coats their hometown of Minnetonka annually. And whereas the sharking will be nice on the Gulf facet of the state, he says he just lately heard from an excellent buddy that some massive sharks had been caught on the Atlantic facet.
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“Elliot is a good buddy, and he told me the water quality was better and warmer, with no red tide near Miami,” he says. “So, we headed over there [on Sunday] to go surf fishing, and it worked out pretty well.”
After attending to the seaside southeast of Miami, Hengel and his dad rigged up a few extra-heavy offshore rods. Hengel’s Avet 80 vast reel was spooled with 1,300 yards of 200-pound braided line, full with an 800-pound metal cable chief. He tied on a 20/0 circle hook and baited it with a 20-pound bonito.
Casting this large, unwieldy rig into the surf can be a problem to say the least, so Hengel hopped in a sit-on-top kayak and paddled out with the bonito whereas his dad free-spooled the reel from the seaside. Once he obtained out a number of hundred yards to deeper water, he dropped the bait, paddled again to the seaside, and waited.
He says it was proper after sundown when the rod began going off. He grabbed maintain with each fingers and set the hook.
After a battle that lasted roughly an hour, Hengel eased the shark into the shallows. A pair seaside walkers who have been passing by helped the 2 males as they wrestled the large feminine out of the waves and onto the moist sand.
The Release
The two anglers labored rapidly to measure the shark. They taped it at 114 inches lengthy, with a 55-inch girth. Then they plugged these measurements into numerous length-girth formulation to get a tough concept of the shark’s weight. (Determining the precise weight of huge fish, and particularly dwell sharks, is troublesome. These formulation function broad tips, they usually differ significantly relying on the species.)
Their math got here out to round 550 kilos, which might have simply changed the present Florida state file—a 517-pound bull shark that was caught off Panama City Beach in 1981. However, the one method to decide the true weight of Hengel’s shark would have been to kill the fish and produce it to an authorized scale with witnesses current.
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He determined to launch the shark as an alternative. After slipping out the barbless circle hook, they carried the shark again into the surf and watched it swim away. The entire course of took about 60 seconds, he says. Of course, the discharge additionally implies that another person would possibly get the prospect to do battle with the identical bull shark sooner or later. Who is aware of. There would possibly even be a 13-year-old child watching.