It's Shark Week"
Wonder who they caught?
Catch of a lifetime': 12-foot great white shark caught and released on Pensacola Beach
Jake Newby
Pensacola News Journal
Two hours into the very first saltwater fishing trip of their lives March 3, seven friends from Idaho caught a great white shark on Pensacola Beach.
That's a wildly high bar to set for future fishing trips, and the Pensacola charter captain who made the catch possible let them know as much.
"I told them, 'I've been doing this for five years and you guys just caught a great white about an hour and a half into the trip,'" said John McLean, the charter captain of his own Big John Shark Fishing Adventures company. "You may never see this again."
McLean, a retired former goalie for the Pensacola Ice Flyers, runs six-hour, eight-hour and all-night charters in which he guides groups of people on private shark fishing trips. This particular trip March 3 just happened to net one of the most astounding catch-and-release experiences of McLean's life.
I would say it's an 80% chance that you'll catch (a shark) on one of my trips, but it's fishing so you never know," McLean said. "The coolest part with it for me is, you never know what's going to be on the other end of the line. So this was just so unique and obviously a catch of a lifetime."
McLean said the adrenaline was flowing during the 40-minute fight, which occurred about 100 yards offshore. He said he dropped three baits that night, all past the second sandbar on the beach. The bait that landed the great white was a 16-inch Bonita fish purchased from Gulf Breeze Bait and Tackle.
McLean said just one of the Homedale, Idaho, natives made the reel.
"I've caught 12-foot tiger sharks and hammerheads, so one thing with these bigger sharks is, sometimes they don't always know they're hooked," said McLean, who posted the entire catch on his YouTube channel. "The shark really didn't start fighting until he saw the second sandbar, which is roughly 350 yards from the beach. If you watch the video you can see where he's just really pulling line.
►OCEARCH shows a 1,185-pound female great white shark near Pensacola Beach
►2,076-pound great white shark Unama'ki 'pings' off Pensacola over the weekend
Great whites are federally protected to the point that fishermen aren't permitted to take them out of the water to measure, but McLean said the shark was at least 12 feet long. He estimated that it weighed 1,200 pounds.
When it came to the shark's identity, McLean said there was no mistaking it.
"I saw the black eyes on it and the fin is very recognizable compared to others," McLean said. "So my main thing was, 'I need to get this released.'"
McLean has a custom de-hooker that maintains about two feet of distance between the shark and the person releasing it.
"The hook was right in the corner of the mouth so we were able to pop the hook out, no blood, and it was within minutes that we were able to release it," he said. "It was such a big shark though, and my adrenaline was pumping, so in the moment I'm standing there in chest-deep water and all I wanted to do was make sure this thing swam off. It wasn't until I got back and started calming down that I thought, 'Holy cow, I was in chest-deep water with a potentially 1,200-pound great white shark.'"
For the Idaho visitors with whom McLean shared the incredible moment, the catch that day was the norm; they had nothing to compare it to, after all.
"After I released it and everything they came up to me and said, 'Honestly John, if you weren't as excited as you were we would have thought this was a normal thing,'" McLean said.
A clip of the surreal catch is at the top of the story. Keep tabs on McLean's adventures by following his Instagram page at instagram.com/bigjohnsharkfishing.
Jake Newby can be reached at jnewby@pnj.com or 850-435-8538.
https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2021/03/15/great-white-shark-pensacola-beach-caught-released-local-charter/4706905001/
https://www.al.com/news/2021/03/2-great-whites-1-tiger-shark-tracked-off-alabama-gulf-coast.html
https://www.al.com/news/2021/03/testing-time-a-prolific-religion-scholar-and-great-white-sharks-down-in-alabama.html