In a great way to advertise for his land-based shark fishing charter, a Florida professional shark fisherman was able to land a massive 13-foot-long great white shark.
The fish was caught by John McLean, the owner, and operator of Big John Shark Fishing Adventures in Pensacola, Florida, and his clients on a 24-hour charter last month, he shared with Fox News.
To catch the fish, which they landed at Pensacola Beach, McLean loaded his customer’s line with the head of a “massive yellowfin tuna.” When fishing, McLean opts to cast from the shore instead of from a boat, and he says that the giant shark was caught about “800 years off the beach.”
Once the shark took the bait, McLean said it was a team effort to get it to shore and complete the catch — as everyone knows, it didn’t happen if you don’t get a picture of it.
“I had four clients switching off reeling in the shark, and I also had my friend, Captain David Miller, helping me run the charter,” the fishing expert wrote in an email to Fox News.
In total, six people spent time reeling the fish in, which McLean says took about an hour and seven minutes altogether. The event was caught on camera by McLean and shared to his social media platforms.
Not just any fishing rod from Dick’s Sporting Goods can be used when catching sharks, as McLean shared that he uses specialized equipment, from the rod to the fishing line.
“My fishing gear was pushed to the limits, but it was up to the task to effectively reel in this massive white shark,” McLean told Fox News. “Since I used proper equipment, we were able to make a quick release. Shark fishing and conservation starts with using the right gear.”
While the fight with the shark took some time — though not as much as it took the fishermen in ‘Jaws’ — McLean shared that the shark was released back into the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean within a minute and a half of landing it.
The fisherman also noted that he didn’t have time to officially measure the shark, though he believed it to be longer than 12 feet, as that’s the size he typically catches.
“I knew this was something bigger than anything I had seen before,” he told the media outlet.
The largest a great white shark can get is 20 feet long, with males averaging within 11 to 13 feet and females being the larger of the species at 15 to 16 feet long, according to the Smithsonian.
Encountering the fish the way McLean and his fellow fishermen did is among the best possible of situations, as many would take catching the shark over running into it alone in the middle of the ocean, like one diver did last week.
A video went viral online when a diver from the South African shark conservation company White Shark Ocean caught a giant great white swimming within a few feet of an underwater cameraman, the New York Post reported.
The video shows the shark headed straight toward the diver before it turned left at the last minute and decided to swim on. Great white sharks are among the biggest fish in the ocean, and the video truly shows that.
As for McLean, the fisherman said he wasn’t trying to catch the great white but instead help his customers land the largest shark they could. In fact, the area he and his customers caught the great white shark is not typically known for being home to the species, but he added that anglers can’t target a certain type.
“I was not targeting great white sharks on this charter. I was attempting to catch my clients the largest shark possible,” he said. “It is very rare to catch a great white in this area, especially from the Gulf Coast.”
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