Now is prime time to go monster shark fishing in Islamorada! We left on the Bn’M II yesterday morning and the plan was to go vertical jigging, and then head to the hump to try for a big shark. When we hit the first spot we found some AJ’s, but the sharks had found them too! We managed to catch a handful of who ones, but the sharks got a few of them too!
I thought about shark fishing in the first spot, but I really felt confident with heading to the hump where the sharks school up this time of year. It can be a feeding frenzy on the spawning amberjack. We sent down a live jack on one rod, and put a dead bait near the surface. Before we got the live jack down we had a bite! Colin got in the chair and went to work. After about 20 minutes we got a visual on the beast!
We could tell it was a nice size shark. Once we got him closer up on the leader we identified it as a very large bull shark! Well over 300 lbs!
After taking a few pics we cut the leader and the big fish swam away. It was Colin’s first bull shark, and it was a darn nice one!
We made a few more drifts over the hump, and each time we had a bite. I think we used up all our luck though, because we lost one more shark after a 15 minute fight, and the other few bites got our bait off the hook. It was a fun day though, and I am looking forward to the rest of April, as well as Shark fishing May! Send me an email if you want to try to catch JAWS! bnmcharters@gmail.com
Capt. Nick Stanczyk