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Blue shark battle

Capt. Jack Sprengel emailed this:

I'm writing you today to inform you of a massive blue shark that I hooked while fishing with two close friends, brothers Mike and Brian Baccari on-board their boat OFF CALL. We fished last Wednesday in the area between the Mud Hole and the Gully.

Two hours into our drift, one of our balloons popped, and the rod baited with a live 6-pound bluefish began to scream. I strapped on the fighting belt, placed the Penn 50TW (loaded with 50-pound Big Game) into strike and gave a running hookset to what would turn into a back-breaking 3-hour-and-38-minute fight.

Once we finally were able to get the fish to stay boat-side we estimated it at approximately 13-plus feet in length and all of 500 pounds. Hands down, it was the biggest blue shark that I have ever seen. I have several video clips and pictures of the shark and fight.

I'm 5'11" and about 225 pounds. Take a look at how much just the tail of this fish dwarfs me. I have been viewing the pictures of world record blue sharks online and believe that the tail of this fish is easily larger than that of theirs.

I may hit a dead end with all of these efforts as I did release this fish. You can't eat them, and I had way too much respect for him after the 3.5-hour battle. He was beautiful, with no scars or tags in him, and he had a foot-long remora attached to his side. It was a bittersweet moment to send him back.

I wouldn't have been able to land this fish with out the help of Mike "Shark Whisperer" Baccari on leader and tail rope and his brother Brian, the skipper of Off-Call. Brian also
filmed all of the video/photo footage and landed two 8-foot-plus sharks that came to the boat during my intense battle.

Posted by Tom Meade  at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments 4