My friend Bobby Harrison and I, Kameron Brown, launched out of Dana Harbor in search of some inshore pelagics. Searching, drifting, casting, and stripping every paddy in eyesight. We pulled up to a really lovely kelp paddy that had some trashcan size chunks dispersed around it. We drifted and fished that one several times and came up empty-handed. We put the boat in gear and putted over to a smaller piece just 100′ away. As we approached the paddy(a chunk of floating kelp), we saw a huge black blob.
Whale? Mola? What is that? I just about fainted when I saw what we thought to be a 1000 lb Mako Shark, swimming 3 feet under our boat. I didn’t even think twice and set my rod down, grabbed the GoPro, and started filming. I had never seen a Mako Shark this big in my life and never thought I’d ever have the chance to see something of this size, especially being about 10 miles off of my daily surf spot, San Onofre.
Bobby and I were freaking out, unsure of what to do. We put the boat in gear and moved away from the fish and just as we started moving, my fly line starts zipping through the guides and finally stops at the reel. I picked up the rod in fear of me hooking the kelp paddy that would inhibit us from fleeing this beast until all of a sudden my reel started screaming. Absolutely screaming…… We couldn’t help but think that the fish would do an ariel jump and land in our 15′ boat and sink us/eat us!
The fish was burning drag for the next five minutes until the 20lb fluorocarbon finally broke…
We came home and checked the footage and to our surprise, the 1000 lb Mako Shark, that scared the crap out of us, was actually a 1500 lb Great White Shark…..
Huge thanks to Howler Bros, Socco Socks, SPY Optics, 81 Wetsuits, Shaper Studios, and Almond Surfboards for making my life a living dream. Make sure to check out Kameron and Bobby on Instagram!
