It took Brett Rutledge nearly an hour to boat one of the biggest sharks in Alabama history on July 22. While competing with a team of anglers in the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo, Rutledge hauled in a tiger shark weighing roughly 1,019 pounds.

If the catch holds up to scrutiny by the state, Rutledge’s tiger shark will set a new Alabama record for the species. The current state-record tiger shark, according to the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, weighed 988 pounds. It was caught near Gulf Shores by angler Larry Eberly in 1990.

“We caught seven sharks this morning, and this happened to the biggest,” Rutledge told Fox-10 News over the weekend. “I’m excited … and if it does hold, it will be a new state record, so that would be cool.”

No official length measurement was available, but judging from the photo of the anglers standing beside it, the tiger shark appeared to be well over 10 feet long. It also had some tremendous girth, along with a huge, blunt-nosed head that’s typical of big tigers.

Spud Marshall, who was fishing with Rutledge during the tournament, said they caught the shark while trolling. It turned a tough day of tournament fishing into one for the record books.

Read Next: Watch: Shark Drags Fisherman Overboard in Florida Everglades

“It was a fight, but we got it,” Marshall told reporters. “We went out to catch swordfish, but the bite just wasn’t happening. So, on our way in we decided to set some lures out, and we caught it on the way in.”

This year marks the 90^th annual Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo. Billed as “the largest fishing tournament in the world,” the three-day event brings in over 3,000 anglers each year. It’s located on Dauphin Island where Mobile Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico.   

The world-record tiger shark was caught by Kevin Clapson on in March, 2004 near Ulladulla, Australia. Its official weight was 1,785 pounds, 11 ounces.

The post 1,000-Pound Tiger Shark Should Smash Alabama Record appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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THE ERUPTION was so swift and violent that for a second I thought it had ripped open the bateau’s seams. I pushed hard against the gunwale to steady us, then threw up my hands to protect my face. A deluge of water sloshed me from hat brim to belt. When it subsided I looked up and saw Ted still on his feet staggering in the bow. The muscles of his forearms suddenly knotted and his rod snapped straight, knocking him for a loop and almost spilling him overboard. He fell into the seat. 

“Let’s get out of here before one of those briny tigers drowns us,” I gasped. Ted Henson cackled like he’d laid an egg. 

“Not on your life,” he shouted. “If these fan-tailed monkeys think they can keelhaul me they’ve got another think coming.” He started to rig up again, and I jabbed my paddle in the inky water. 

The twisting water trail, winding down its glaucous tunnel, looked as peaceful as the inside of a church. But I knew better. Below its placid surface were some of the most vicious creatures I’ve encountered in over 40 years. All my fishing life I’d searched for such a place as this, but now that I’d found it I was ready to swap it for a spot not quite so overpowering. 

What amazed me more than anything else about this wild region was the fact that it has stayed undiscovered for so long by the angling clan. Stretching for about 50 miles in the northwestern section of Florida’s Everglades, it lies between the well-traveled Tamiami Trail and the heavily fished Ten Thousand Islands from Marco to Lostman’s River. 

A MILLION ACRES or more, it is a vast open pasture of head-high saw grass networked with mangrove islands, oddly shaped lakes, and countless creeks and rivers. Its waters are lined with snarled mangrove roots and canopied with dense foliage. It is as isolated and virgin as the vast tundras on the top shelves of the continent. Protected on one side by treacherous bogs, and on the other by distance and shallow bars capable of trapping a boat at almost any stage of tide, it is a natural spawning ground for unnumbered species of salt-water fish. 

Ted was on his knees in the bow, rattling around in his lures and looking for one of the same color as that which had been so rudely smashed off the end of his line. He’d left his tackle box on the dock and had piled 100 lures in a cardboard container which he’d been keeping close by him in the boat. Long ago I’d lost count of the plugs he’d lost, and was wondering if his assortment would hold out until noon. The mistake I made was in wondering out loud. Ted cocked a sweaty, sun-scorched face at me and then reached over and jabbed the rod butt into my hand. 

“Since you’re so smart,” he rattled, “let’s see you handle them.” 

Ted held the line and tied onto it a plug the color of country butter and sparsely speckled with yellow, brown, and crimson dots. I’d have picked it as the lure least likely to succeed, but every one of its mates we’d dunked that morning had driven the fish insane. 

“Throw it,” Ted dared, “throw it and hold on to your hat.” 

The jungle pressed down too close for an overhand cast, but the trail was just wide enough to give the six-foot rod a horizontal motion. I flipped the chunk of bright wood into a dark nook. 

Since daylight I’d watched Ted retrieve in short, swift jerks that gave the lure a darting action, like a minnow fleeing for its life. I’d given that line exactly three jerks when a vicious strike almost snapped my wrists. It was a tremendous snook, a robalo, or as the Florida swampers call it, a snuke. 

I BRACED both knees against the rim of the bateau and hung on. The monster threw himself into the air with the power of a tarpon and the speed of a rainbow trout. He hurdled a crooked mangrove stem, beat the water into suds, flung himself clear again, and then plowed headfirst into a tangle of roots. That was all. There was no stopping him, no turning, no checking. His lightning run broke the line and left me rocking. As I fell against the seat Ted giggled like a crazy mermaid. 

I pawed through the cardboard box for another of those candy-colored plugs, but the one I’d just been relieved of was the last. So I picked one of a color that almost matched and clinchknotted it directly onto my heavy leader. We’d started fishing with snap swivels, but a hard-hitting snook had put an end to that by straightening the tiny wire of my swivel on its first ferocious strike. 

I hooked a three-pound fish on my off-color lure and turned it back. I raked the crannies with a dozen casts that failed to produce, so I changed to a lure Ted selected. This bit of hookhung wood proved even less attractive to the fish, so I tied on a bright silver floater and laid it beside an old log. A jack crevallé took it on the run. He wouldn’t go two pounds, soaked to the gills, but he gave my weapon a workout before I shook him off. 

I changed places with Ted, and on the third cast he picked up a baby snook not much bigger than the plug. Ted threw him back and put his rod in the boat. 

“What would you say,” he asked, turning to me, “was the first rule of snook fishing?” 

“Carry a tackle manufacturer with you at all times,” I replied. 

TED NODDED and cranked the motor. Ike Walker, whose business and pleasure in life is the manufacture of fishing lures, was somewhere south of us on the creek fishing with Grady Blanton and Milton Pace. Ike had made the trek into this brackish wilderness for the sole purpose of finding out what kind of lures the big snook find irresistible. He’d brought along hundreds of plugs of every imaginable color, size, and action, and from these we’d selected half a dozen patterns which we’d found most productive. The one we nicknamed Candy was head and dorsal the prize whammy on snook. 

I relaxed while Ted guided the boat along the tortuous run. A movement in the arched branches caught my eye, and a huge raccoon scampered along the aerial pathway from one side of the creek to the other. He was only one of many we’d seen that morning. The mangrove roots within arm’s reach of us were alive with sand crabs-tidbits to coons-and I was amusing myself watching them when Ted suddenly swung the bateau at a sharp angle. “Look out,” he yelled. 

I didn’t know whether to dodge or jump, and had no time to do either before I got a glimpse of an alligator as long as our boat. We’d startled him out of his morning nap, and Ted had swung the bateau just as the monster lunged for the protection of deep water. Somehow he managed to get under us, but his leathery tail hit the boat a terrific smack and sent enough water skyward to make a good-size squall. 

As we putted along, the only signs I saw of other anglers was an occasional beer can hung on a bush. Ted noticed me looking at one. 

“That,” he said, “was put there by Little Tiger.” 

I’d heard about Little Tiger. He was a Seminole guide who lived across from the main road and had been Ted’s escort on a couple of previous trips into this never-never land. We’d spent most of one night trailing him until the road ran out and left our jalopy stuck to the hubs in muck and sand. We’d planned to offer him plenty of greenbacks to take us to a lake where he’d refused to carry Ted because he said it was bad luck.

The two of them had twice started out for the hidden lake. The first time they met a tremendous manatee in a deep run. It was almost as large, Little Tiger said, as one he’d roped in the canal that runs by his village. He tied his line to a bridge and the big sea cow pulled both bridge and Little Tiger into the drink.

The second time, Ted was reaching for a low limb to help keep the boat straight when Little Tiger hit him between the shoulders with his push pole and knocked him out of the bateau. A water moccasin the size of a baby python was stretched across the limb. On both occasions Little Tiger refused to go farther because he declared he’d been given infallible signs of oncoming disaster. 

Ted was saying he didn’t think we’d run into Little Tiger on this trip when we rounded a bend and swept into an open river. The sunlight almost blistered my eyeballs before I caught a glimpse of Ike Walker’s boat ahead. As we glided up to them, Blanton held up a good snook he’d just brought into the boat. 

“If you’re looking for more of those Candy plugs,” Ike said, “you can keep going.” 

“You’ve got them hid,” Ted accused. “Dig ’em out.” 

“We’ve lost all but two,” Ike insisted. “I’ve got to save those for models.” 

“Save one,” Ted suggested, “and we’ll save the other.” 

Ike grumbled, fumbled in the bushel of plugs scattered around his boat, and came up with a Candy that was scarred with teeth marks. 

“It’s the last one,” he begged. “Don’t fish it under those mangroves.” 

We refilled Ted’s paper container with a hatful of other artificials and turned toward the dock to pick up Grady Cushing. Grady had assured us that he knew where Little Tiger’s unlucky lake was. He hadn’t fished it for more than a year, he said, but on his last trip took snook out of it as large as those that had smashed our tackle in the runs. He was waiting for us, armed with a casting rod that was so short it made ours look like television antennas. Ted reached for the sawed-off tubular glass. 

“How long?” he asked. 

“Three feet,” Grady said, “and it’s loaded with 40-pound-test line. Want to try it?” 

Ted laughed. “No, thanks. I don’t crave hand-to-hand combat with those bruisers.” 

We turned and went back up the jungle trail, and as we did so Grady studied the water that was rising in the run. 

“Believe the tide’s high enough now. We can take a short cut to the lake and save an hour’s run.” 

We turned off the deep trail and plowed into a sheet of open water that wasn’t spread much thicker over the marsh than a windowpane. Ted cut his motor to slow and we flushed a flock of bluewing teal feeding in a shallow neck. 

“Those birds should be in the Arctic Circle making love,” I said. Grady wagged his head. “They nest here.”

LIFE IS ABUNDANT on this vast watery prairie. We flushed flocks of colored birds, white ibis, and hawks. Almost every 100 yards we surprised big snook that took off and left wakes like runaway torpedoes. I wanted to stop and throw the Candy at them, but Grady said no. He allowed that a chunk of wood that size would run those snook clean ashore. 

We squeezed through a narrow pass in the saw grass which only Grady and Little Tiger could have known about. The tide was almost high. It shoved us right up under the overhanging limbs, and often we had to lie down in the bateau to get through. We churned through a succession of lakes, each a little deeper than the last, and just before noon came out into a wide body of water the color of chocolate and that seemed to be about eight feet deep. 

Grady turned his head without moving his shoulders, like an Okeechobee owl. “Put your tackle under the seat,” he warned, “and don’t fall overboard. The snook in here are big as crocodiles and just as mean.” 

“Does this lake have a name?” The Floridian flicked his eyes at me, good-naturedly. “We call it the Calamity Hole.” 

It was alive with fish. Mullet were jumping everywhere I looked, and heavy boils around the boat strongly suggested that the snook were large and hungry. Ted and I both reached for the Candy plug, but Grady shook his head. 

“Better go ashore and have our lunch first,” he said. “You’ll need the strength.” 

MY INSIDES were slamming around with the beauty of the place and the excitement of being in a spot few white men had seen. Grady pushed the boat to an open, grassy bank and jumped out, and I dutifully passed him the sandwiches and coffee jug. 

I wolfed down my sandwiches, poured a slug of coffee on top of them, and stalked up and down the bank wondering if my partners thought they were holding a wake. 

“Stop loafing,” Grady called, “and toss a lure to that fish boiling off the point.” 

“But don’t use that Candy plug,” Ted yelped. 

I dug a yellow, polka-dotted lure out of the pile, tied it on, and tested the gut and line. The fish swirled again, and I threw the saffron bait two feet beyond him. He met it at the surface. When I jabbed the hooks home he shot a good five feet into the air and stretched the nylon like a telephone wire. At the top of his thrust I turned him over and threw him hard against the surface. He bounced and took off like a marlin, whiplashing for 50 feet on his tail. 

He jumped again and I crushed the palm of my hand against the reel to stop it, but I wasn’t fast enough. The whirling spool snarled the line into a knotty tangle and the sprinting snook snapped it like a strand of blond hair. 

I licked my skinned knuckles and looked around. Ted was choking on a sandwich and Grady was watching me with an amused glint in his eye. I put the rod back in the boat. 

“There are plenty of plugs,” Grady said with a smile. 

“I’d better save my fingers,” I replied, “I may need them again sometime.” 

We packed our empty food containers in the boat and, with Ted in the bow and me between them with my camera, Grady poled us slowly into the middle of the lake. There Ted had 100 yards or more of battleground all around him. 

The next hour was one of the brightest highlights of my fishing experience. Those snook took everything Ted offered. They hit anything that darted, moved, wiggled, or quivered. I decided that if my hat fell overboard I wouldn’t dip a finger in the water to pick it up. 

I quickly ran out of film, and with nervous fingers locked the camera back in its case. Ted heard the snap click and, without glancing around, handed me my rod. I got the lure into the middle of the lake and gurgled it toward the boat. A husky snook slashed at it and missed. “Speed it up,” Ted yelled. 

The fish took enough line on his second lunge to make the reel whine, and then went into the air. I got him in finally, and Grady hefted him on the gaff. “Fifteen-pounder, at least,” he said. 

Ted was fighting one with his spinning tackle. The monofilament was making like a bandsaw. I lost count of the fish we hooked and landed. After each cast we argued with Grady to give up his push pole and take one of the rods. But Grady wouldn’t. 

“Get your bellies full,” he said. “There’s one spot I’ll try between here and home.” 

The ligaments in my arm finally gave out, and my wrist and forearm got so sore I couldn’t keep a tight line. I began to lose fish or plug on every cast. Grady squinted at the sun. 

“Maybe we’d better get going,” he said. “The short cut’s dry and it’s a long way home.” 

I noticed for the first time that a dozen runs led out of the lake, and each was exactly like the other. The first shadows of late afternoon had brought out the mosquitoes-vicious, hot-needled gangsters that would die for a drop of blood. We hadn’t stopped fishing too soon. We slid into the darkening recesses of the mangroves and crossed flats and watery trails until I was hopelessly confused. Grady shut off the motor. 

“Yonder’s a deep hole,” he said, “at the junction of the creek. Swing the stern around and let me try this short rod.” 

I paddled for 100 yards while Ted kept up a tap routine at the mosquitoes boring through his shirt. Over his protests, Grady tied on the Candy plug and flipped it 40 feet under the limbs to where the mingling currents made an eddy. He retrieved without a strike and was flexing his muscles to lift the plug out of the water when a tremendous snook walloped it right under the bow. The collision flashed me back to the bull alligator Ted and I had jumped that morning. 

I’VE SEEN some classic roping and bulldogging in my day, as well as some unforgettable conflicts with fish, but I’ve never witnessed anything like the fight Grady had with that snook. Why the brute didn’t pull the hooks out of that plug, snap the 40-pound-test line, or break one of Grady’s arms, I’ll never know. Neither fisherman nor fish gave line-not a foot of it. Around and around the boat they went, with both Ted and me dodging to stay out of the way. 

I’ve no idea how the battle would have ended if the snook hadn’t decided on a last desperate bid for freedom. He threw his bulk straight into the air, missing my face by a thin scale, and landed in the boat, his tail slapping gas cans, rods, and gear like the swirl of a tornado. I dodged a plug that whistled past my ear just as Ted planted his brogans in the middle of the whole seething mess and pinned down the snook’s tail. 

Grady put down the rod and took his seat as unconcerned as if he caught a 20-pound snook exactly that way every time.

Presently he cranked the motor and pushed on down the trail, while Ted and I picked lures out of the snook’s sides, belly, and fins, like we were harvesting spiny cucumbers. 

The darkness closed around us, and Ted’s teeth gleamed at me out of his parched face. 

“There are plenty of tricks you could try on these babies” he said, “but I never saw a more confusing one than this.” 

“Than what?”

“Than feeding them candy,” he said. “What else?”

This text has been minimally edited to meet contemporary standards. Read more OL+ stories.

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According to a recent story on the website of Australia’s 9 News, Steven Kezic of Perth was the victim of one of the biggest freak occurrences involving a fish I’ve ever seen. While on vacation in Indonesia, Kezic was attending a surfing class and, as he bobbed offshore waiting to catch a wave, a garfish jumped from the water and impaled the bridge of his nose with its sharp beak. The gar in question is not related to the freshwater gars we have in the states, but rather it’s a member of the halfbeak family. The most prevalent halfbeak in U.S. waters is the ballyhoo, which are commonly sold frozen in bait shops and trolled offshore to entice marlin and tuna. Having rigged my share of ballyhoos over the years, I’d have never guessed that the elongated lower jaws, or beaks, of these tiny fish would be strong or sharp enough to pierce cartilage, but the gruesome photos of Kezic’s face are proof positive.

Kezic got away with only a few stitches, but had the fish connected a few inches higher, it could have spiked his eyeball. The funny thing is that while getting stuck by a ballyhoo is so rare it teeters on comical, you are far more likely to get stabbed by a fish than bitten by one. Shark attacks get all the press. We occasionally hear about an unlucky snorkeler wearing shiny jewelry that a barracuda just felt the need to chomp. There have even been documented reports of pike and muskies biting into human flesh. But the fact remains that these cases are extremely rare compared to fish stabbings. So, let’s look at some of the most common fish in U.S. waters that are likely to give you jab you won’t forget. And no, none of them are billfish, because being run through by a marlin is even less likely than getting bitten by a shark.

Catfish

Without question, catfish are the most likely fish to inflict a stab wound, and it makes no difference which species you’re chasing. Every kind of catfish that exists in America—from tiny madtoms to massive blue cats—have sharp, needle-like spines on the leading edges of their pectoral and dorsal fins. And the smaller the catfish the more unhappy you’ll be if you get poked.

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Madtoms are especially nasty, as their tiny spikes are pointier than all other cats. Plus, they inject a mild venom when they stab you. It’s not going to send you to the hospital or require antivenom, but it will make the area around the puncture point throb and hurt a lot worse than you think it should. Catfish spines are designed as a defense mechanism to thwart attacks and, if swallowed by a larger fish, potentially wedge in the attacker’s mouth or throat. All fish are most vulnerable when they’re little, so the spikes on any juvenile catfish will be sharper and capable of inflicting more damage. The most common time to get stung is while trying to get hold of a smaller cat that’s flopping around, so always take your time getting a grip, and keep your hands behind the dorsal and pectoral fins if you can.

As catfish grow and need to worry less about being eaten, their spikes tend to thicken and dull, and quite often end up getting covered over by a thick membrane of skin. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry about the spines on a 20-pound channel catfish or 60-pound blue at all, but they pose much less of a threat.

Skates and Stingrays

Whether you’re swimming in Florida, surfing in New Jersey, or wading a flat for seatrout in Texas, the opportunity to step on a skate or stingray is very real.

Stingrays, of course, have been made famous by shows like River Monsters, and most people are aware that a stingray wound caused Australian TV star, Steve Irwin, to lose his life. If one of these stealthy, flat bottom feeders rams its serrated tail spike into your calf, it’ll deliver a heavy dose of venom, which, depending on the size and species, can be fatal. For the most part, stingrays steer clear of heavily trafficked beaches with lots of swimming activity, however, anglers who wade remote flats in the Gulf routinely wear stingray guards on their lower legs.

Skates are more common in cooler northern waters, and while they look like stingrays, they belong to a different family of fishes. The good news is that they don’t have a long tail spine, nor can they inject venom. Skates do have a series of short spines and spikes on their tails, however, and they can also deliver a mild electric shock if you step on them. You won’t wind up in the ER, but you’ll go running for the beach if you put your bare foot down on a skate’s tail.

Spiny Dogfish

Spiny dogfish are a scourge in the Atlantic. A member of the shark family, dogfish rarely exceed 40 inches in length. Though you’re unlikely to contact one while swimming, inshore anglers from Florida to Maine deal with them constantly, and it’s never pleasant.

You could be dropping clams for cod, jigs for striped bass, or squid strips for snapper—if there are spiny dogfish around, they’ll eat it. They thrive from the shallows to in depths greater than 100 feet, and usually if you hook into one, you’re going to hook into a lot more. Spiny dogfish have a thick, hard, super-pointy spine in front of each of their dorsal fins, and they know how to use them. As soon as they hit the net or get dropped on deck, they will writhe, twist, spin, and do whatever they can to bury those spikes in you while you’re attempting to get them off the hook. So tough are their spines that I’ve seen them pierce heavy gloves and even thick rubber deck boots.

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The easiest and safest way I’ve found to deal with them is to step on them. You’re not trying to squish them to death, of course, but by putting some steady pressure on the dorsal fins with the thick sole of a boot or shoe (flip flops, not so much), you’ll stop them from moving so you can get the hook out. Always neutralize the tail first, as spiny dogfish can still whip it around if the front half of their body is incapacitated. Once the hook is out, grab them by the lower jaw with pliers and, with an extended arm, quickly lift them off the deck and toss them overboard.

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Sharks have been a major problem in the Northeast U.S. in recent weeks. Five people were bitten by the toothy predators in just two days around July 4th on New York’s Long Island; now videos have surfaced showing a shark attacking and killing a seal in Massachusetts has prompted authorities to close some beaches near Nantucket Island.

The video, recorded by Nick Gault from a boat near Great Point on the northern tip of Nantucket Island, shows blood-stained water from a shark ravaging a seal right beside the beach. The seal, missing its tale but still alive, later washes ashore and is set upon by gulls. The Costaka-Coatue Wildlife Refuge at Great Point was closed to swimming as a precaution against sharks, according to the Nantucket Current.

“Those videos are pretty troubling, and no human could survive that,” Diane Lang a stewardship manager on Nantucket told Fox News. “The policy is in place now. We’re telling our visitors no swimming at Great Point. I was in touch with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and they’re in full agreement [with the closure].”

Lang said that seal populations in the area have disappeared following the shark attack at Nantucket. Apparently, seals knew it was time to skedaddle. Tiger shark schools have been spotted in some Northeast coastal areas recently, with up to 50 sharks in one school seen cruising near the Long Island shore.

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Major shark precautionary measures are underway in the region. Lifeguards are patrolling beach areas with jet skis, and aerial drones are being deployed in some Northeast coastal regions to monitor sharks and warn swimmers about their presence.

“Drones will increase the shark monitoring capacity of local governments across Long Island and New York City, ensuring local beaches are safe for all beachgoers, Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement.”

Meanwhile, wildlife managers are reminding beachgoers that shark attacks on humans are the exception, not the norm.

“New York’s shores are home to a wild and natural marine ecosystem that supports the annual migration of sharks to our coastal waters,” New York Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Basil Seggos said in a statement. “While human-shark interactions are rare, DEC encourages the public to follow shark safety guidance to help minimize the risk of negative interactions with sharks this summer.”

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If luck were money, then Ben Kenney would be filthy rich. In late June, the YouTuber from Massachusetts went fishing in the Atlantic and made an unbelievable catch. He landed a fishing rod with a giant striped bass still hooked up to it. Fortunately, Kenney has proof of the catch since he recorded a video and shared it on Instagram.

“This is one of the craziest things that has ever happened to me!” Kenney wrote in the video’s description. “I’m still in shock at how ridiculous and lucky this catch was.”

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The episode began on or before June 27, when Kenney and some friends went fishing near Boston with Captain Vinny and Storm Buster Charters. At some point that morning, while they were targeting stripers, one of their trolling rods was yanked out of the rod holder. It disappeared into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, and Vinny wrote it off as just another lost piece of fishing tackle.

A little while later, the group was still fishing when Kenney felt a tug on the end of his line and set the hook.

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The video starts here, with Kenney doing battle with what looks like a heavy fish. But after two minutes of reeling, they only see the tip of a fishing rod breaking the surface. It turns out to be the exact same spinning rod that fell into the drink earlier, and Kenney’s crankbait is hooked solidly on the uppermost guide.

“Did I just catch your fishing rod?!” Kenney asks the captain. “There’s no way!”

Everyone on the boat starts to laugh as Vinny lifts on the recovered rod. Then he feels weight on the other end of the line.  

“I think the fish is on this one,” Vinny says, reeling in the slack and handing the rod back to Kenney. “Yeah, take this.”

The anglers can hardly contain their laughter. They cheer Kenney on as he battles the fish, working the doubled-over rod up and down.

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“This is just way [more] bizarre than I wanted anything to be,” Capt. Vinny jokes. “This might be a boat that I lost a couple years ago.”

Moments later, Vinny slips the net underneath a giant striped bass. Then he hands it off to Kenney for a photo. It might not be the biggest catch of his life, but it will likely be remembered as the luckiest.

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ON ANY GIVEN weekend this summer, there’s a lionfish derby underway in Florida. As the lionfish population has exploded in recent years, so too has interest in targeting the invasive critters. Tournaments begin in late winter and stretch into the fall, with cash and other prizes incentivizing already-motivated spearfishermen to remove as many destructive fish as they can from vulnerable coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. (The species is notorious for its voracious appetite: A single lionfish residing on a reef can reduce native reef fish recruitment by as much as 79 percent.)

The world’s biggest lionfish derby is the Emerald Coast Open, held in Destin, Florida, in mid-May. This year our photographer tagged along with one of the participating teams, captained by spearfisherman Tim Robinson. At 62, Robinson is a scuba instructor and the owner of ZooKeeper, which makes a sort of underwater creel for safely storing lionfish during dives and sponsors lionfish derbies across the state.

“This is not a problem that we’re going to eradicate. Lionfish multiply worse than rabbits,” says Robinson. “A female lionfish lays between 15 to 30,000 eggs every four to seven days, year-round. To put that into perspective, [participants] removed roughly 25,000 lionfish during this two-day derby, and then about a little over 5,000 in the pre-derby that started in February. And that’s basically the number of eggs that one female lionfish lays once a week.”

Not all the eggs in a clutch survive, of course, but Robinson’s math problem helps illustrate the sheer scale of the lionfish invasion. While he enjoys the larger mission of lionfish management, Robinson spends his weekend spearfishing for another reason.

“The truth is that we love it. We love spearing lionfish,” says Robinson. “It’s the thrill of the hunt. They’re not just out swimming around freely. In most cases, you have to hunt for them. It’s fun to come up with a dozen lionfish or a full ZooKeeper. I’ve had days when I couldn’t get any more lionfish in my ZooKeeper. It’s just a great feeling. So yes, we want to be part of the cause [to reduce lionfish] and do our part. But we really, truly love it. It’s just in our blood.”

Read more OL+ stories.

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Capt. Ross Walkinshaw describes great white shark mouths as wood-chippers attached to bodies as round as Honda Civics and as along as Ford F-150s.

“Sharks are extreme. Can you imagine being in eight feet of water and not seeing it until it’s actually right there?” says Walkinshaw. He describes how part of a shark’s chin and nose taper away from its mouth, which is packed with protruding teeth. “It’s like a chainsaw, it’s not like a nice set of dentures. That thing comes out, and it wants to bite things.”

Normally for fishermen in places like Cape Cod, where Walkinshaw owns Cape Cod Charter Guys, the sharks want to bite fish. And they do—plenty of them. Like brown bears grabbing salmon off angler’s lines in Alaska, white sharks (or, as they’re more famously known, great white sharks) have a habit of hanging around fishing boats and waiting for their food to reel past their snouts. One day last summer, a shark came right up to a client on Walkinshaw’s boat, mouth open, teeth on full display.

“When it’s less than a foot away from you inside of a boat, that’s not as cute and fuzzy as it is on TV.”

Walkinshaw figured he’d give that shark some space and relocated five miles to a new spot. He has just hooked into a striped bass and had it behind the boat when another shark came in.

“[The shark] came up and out in 9.7 feet of water and down on the striper and surgically cut it,” says Walkinshaw. “It then folded my rod all the way down and almost pulled me over the set of motors.”

So Walkinshaw moved the boat—again. This time, he motored almost four miles away. Soon after, an 18-foot great white flung itself out of the water in a full breach. That’s when they turned back to shore.

“My customers had had enough,” says Walkinshaw.

A Toothy Comeback

That’s just summer fishing in Cape Cod, say many captains. At times, it can seem like white sharks are just about everywhere. And it’s not likely to change. By some estimates, there are hundreds of white sharks along the Cape at the height of summer.

For some fishing charters, the sharks are a hassle. For others, they aren’t much of a bother. And for charter captains like Capt. Doug Brown, owner of Jenniferann Sportfishing Charters, they help attract clients who want to see a white shark, and are gobsmacked when one chomps a fish off their line.

“They’re a really a cool creature,” Brown says. “They’re just living in their environment. And we’re in theirs.”

Fossil records suggest great whites have been in the Cape Cod area for 400 million years, and their return is a sign of a healthier marine ecosystem. For much of the past century, white shark sightings in places like Cape Cod were rare to nonexistent. In fact, since 1970, the global abundance of sharks declined by 71 percent. Great whites also declined because of a lack of prey, like seals. But because of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, seals rebounded in some areas and flourished in places like Cape Cod. And with an increase in food comes an increase in predators.

Protections for the great white in the 1990s also helped the species. “Over the past decade, Cape Cod has emerged as the only known place in the northwest Atlantic where white sharks aggregate,” says the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, which studies and tracks white sharks. From 2010 to 2021, it has tagged 268 white sharks. In 2022 alone, 134 individual great whites were detected by the AWSC. A new study shows Cape Code is now home to one of the largest seasonal great white gatherings in the world. (Other global hotspots include South Africa, central California, and islands in Mexico and Australia.)

With the white shark’s recovery comes increased interactions with anglers and other recreationists. In 2018, a white shark killed a surfer off the coast of Massachusetts for the first time since 1936. In 2020, a white shark killed a swimmer off the coast of Maine. Now, beaches are lined with signs warning of the sharks’ presence, and spotters drones and planes to detect sharks before they come in contact with humans.

Shark attacks are still incredibly rare, however, especially considering the number of sharks and people sharing the shore at the height of summer. But precautions still make sense, says Brown, who grew up in the area and has run a charter boat for about 25 years.

“I actually went up to a family [with] probably five kids in the water today in Cape Cod Bay,” Brown told me in late June. “And I said to the parents, ‘There are white sharks out here.’ And [the dad] said, ‘Yeah, I know, we won’t be out here long.’ And I said, ‘It doesn’t take long.’ What do you say to something like that? I just turned my boat and shut up.”

Great whites have swum alongside his boat and grabbed his lures. He often sees them breach, jumping into the air and crashing back down. One of his acquaintances once saw a white shark come out of the water to try and snap an American flag fluttering off his outrigger. When white sharks are around, swimmers, surfers, and others playing in the water are at risk of injury. But anglers are relatively safe from bodily harm, says Brown.

“They don’t really bother us,” he says. “Occasionally they spook our fish away and, every once in a while they grab a customer’s fish, but that’s pretty cool to see. People don’t mind that.”

While the occasional customer is scared, “most people love it.” Once, a client even coated her hands in fish slime and put them in the water, hoping to attract a shark so she could see it.

“I said, ‘Not on my boat you’re not,’” Brown says with a laugh. “‘They’re cool eating seals, but let’s not let it be us.’”

Capt. Tom Szado of The Perfect Catch Fishing has been guiding fishing charters in the area since 1978 and says his clients are more amused by the sharks than anything else.

“We’ve had a few fish come back half eaten,. But ya know, they haven’t slowed down our business at all,” says Szado. “They’re not scared as long as the boat’s floating and they can go out on the water.”

Floating Dinner Bell

Has the resurgence of great white sharks changed Cape Cod’s fisheries? Opinions from local anglers vary. Most captains agree seals are the bigger problem. It takes significant numbers of fish to grow and sustain an 800-pound seal. Juvenile white sharks mainly eat bottom fish, smaller sharks and rays, and schooling fish and squids. But larger white sharks often gather around seal and sea lion colonies to feed and also occasionally scavenge dead whales.

Brown doesn’t think the sharks have changed the fishery much, just that fish don’t seem to settle into an area quite like they used to. He also says fishing boats seem to be something akin to dinner bells to the sharks.

“If they hear a diesel engine running, they know there’s food around it and they key in on it,” he says.

It’s illegal for anglers to target great whites, but recreational and commercial fishermen occasionally catch them by accident and release them. Once, Brown hooked into one that stole his bait.

“His tail was the only thing in the water, and he was paddling his tail across the water. You knew he was hooked and we were holding onto him so he couldn’t leave and he was just standing straight up in the air. So he was just dancing with it for a while until he went back in the water. Luckily it did break away and I didn’t lose all my gear.”

Sometimes Brown does lose gear, but more often the shark either grabs the lure and doesn’t break through the metal, or it tears into the fish below the head. Like a meat cleaver, Brown says, only a little curved.

White sharks start trickling in from Southern waters sometime in May, numbers peak in late summer, and they begin leaving again as the water cools. When they peak, Walkinshaw clears out. It’s just not worth it.

“Last year, we had more than a dozen at our boat, so that’s when we switch over to the south side, to the Vineyard, to get away from them,” he says. “They aren’t thick and heavy over there yet.”

Head farther south to places like Long Island, and white sharks become less of a concern, says Long Island Fishing Charters Capt. Andy LoCascio.

“We have many species of sharks that are more obvious,” he says, “and none of them impact charter fishing.”

In Cape Cod, however, the white sharks have arrived for the summer. As he was preparing to head out on the boat for the July Fourth weekend, Brown was listening to his VHF radio from the dock. He called to tell me about it, and left a voicemail.

“Just heard two boats spotted a white shark already this morning, and one got a fish nibbled on as they pulled it up to their boat. So, they’re hungry today.”

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Texas angler Dace D’Onofrio caught his first fish in May while out in the Gulf with his father Michael. It was a black grouper, and the fish was recently certified as a new state record in the Junior Angler Division by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

TPWD Angling Recognition Coordinator Grace Simms tells Outdoor Life that D’Onofrio landed the fish while aboard a charter boat on May 28. The grouper, which had an official weight of 76.55 pounds and measured 57 inches long, was verified as a record by the agency on June 16. And because D’Onofrio caught it while fishing with his dad, TPWD highlighted the catch in a social media post on Father’s Day.

“This is the first black grouper record for the Junior Division, and we’re excited about his catch,” Simms says. She explains that the category was established nearly 20 years ago to recognize anglers under the age of 17.

In order to have the record certified, D’Onofrio’s black grouper had to be verified by TPWD fisheries biologist Christine Jensen. This was important because the Gulf of Mexico is home to several different species of grouper and it can be difficult to distinguish one species from another.

Read Next: Son Convinces Father Not to Eat Pennsylvania’s Probable New State-Record Walleye

Black grouper in particular are a highly sought after game fish because they make excellent table fare and can reach sizes of over 100 pounds. In fact, some of the biggest black grouper ever caught have come from the Texas Gulf Coast. This includes the IGFA all-tackle world record, which weighed 124 pounds and was caught by angler Tim Oestreich II in 2003.

Because the IGFA also maintains a junior angler record book for anglers 16 and under, D’Onofrio’s black grouper could also qualify as a new junior world record for the species. The current junior world record is a 34-pound, 12-ounce black grouper caught in the Bahamas in 2009.

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When most people think of live bait, nothing comes to mind faster than the garden worm. A big, fat, squirmy one will catch almost any fish that swims in freshwater. Shiners are also an extremely common live bait, as are leeches and fathead minnows. You’ll find these baits in practically every quality bait shop across the country. But just because these common live baits are abundant doesn’t mean they’re the only baits in town:

Best Common Live Baits

• Nightcrawlers
• Wax worms
• Shiners
• Fathead minnows
• Leeches
• Bunker
• Shrimp
• Shad
• Mackerel

Some of the best fish foods you can cast out might require you to collect them yourself or find a regional shop that carries harder-to-find baits. There might even be a few species on this list that you routinely see or catch in and around your local fishing holes, but that you’ve never considered putting on a hook. Breaking away from the common shiner and worm can mean the difference between catching little fish and giants, and there’s value to presenting fish with food items that they see and eat often but rarely come with a hook attached. The “sleeper” live baits listed below can all up your game and catch rates:

Best Sleeper Live Baits

• Crayfish
• Hellgrammites
• Bluegills
• Banded Killfish
• Crickets
• Frogs
• Sand fleas
• Madtom catfish
• Mealworms

Bait by the Rules

Before we can discuss these lesser known live baits, a little word on legality. It’s safe to assume that if a live bait is offered for sale in a tackle shop, you’re in the clear to use it however you see fit. But if you’re procuring your own live baits, it could be a different story. That’s why it’s important to check local and state regulations before collecting, using, or transporting any of these species.

In many states, for example, it is illegal to use bluegills as bait even though you can keep a set limit of them for the table. And where I live in Pennsylvania, it is against the law to use a cast net to gather live bait in freshwater. Likewise, many states allow anglers to catch crayfish and shiners in one body of water and use them for bait there. But it can be illegal to collect bait in one waterbody and transport it to another.

Read Next: A Massive Minnow Shortage Is Looming for Minnesota’s Bait Shops

It’s also not uncommon for specific bodies of water to have their own sets of rules. Live shiners may be perfectly fine in most places, but for one reason or another they’re not allowed on certain lakes or rivers. Some states even require special bait collection permits. So, to stay on the right side of the law, always take the time to check the regulations (and even run a quick Google search) on the specific water body you’re planning to fish.

Crayfish

Live crayfish are an incredibly potent bait for a wide variety of species. Though they’re most often used to target moving-water smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, channel catfish, bowfin, and even big trout will happily snatch one of these crispy morsels. Crayfish are highly adept at hiding under rocks, and an exposed crayfish that’s easy to grab is a rare treat.

Since crayfish swim backwards, I like to hook mine through the base of the tail. They work well suspended under a bobber, or you can simply add a few split shot about a foot above the bait and let it sit on the bottom or tick through juicy runs and seams in moving water. Sometimes you can find live crayfish for sale in a bait shop, but if you can’t all you need to do is flip over some rocks in a creek and scoop them in a small net. Heck, sometimes gathering crayfish is more fun than using them to fish, and if you have little kids, they’ll have a blast splashing around to get after them.

Hellgrammites

Hellgrammites are the alien-like larvae of the Dobson fly, a huge flying insect with nasty pinchers that is common across the U.S. Dobson flies are aquatic insects, meaning their eggs are laid in water, they hatch on the bottom, and their larvae cling to rocks or burrow in silt and mud where they feed on microorganisms. 

Hellgrammites produce a pheromone that is practically irresistible to species like bass and trout. And seeing that hellgrammites are usually tucked away out the reach of these fish, even on days when nothing else seems to be working, a fresh “hellgy” will rarely last long. The problem is they’re not an easy bait to get your hands on. You’ll occasionally find them in tackle shops, but if you do, you can expect to pay handsomely for a dozen.

To collect them, anglers use a piece of window screen stretched between two wooden stakes. The screen gets positioned downstream of a rock, and then the rock is flipped to allow the debris under it—and hopefully a hellgrammite or two—to get washed into the screen. It’s a time consuming process, and old timers keep productive areas and knowledge about prime collection times close to their vests.

If you do get your hands on some hellgrammites, use a light-wire long shank hook and run it just once through the collar behind the head. Hellgrammites are tough baits, and rigged this way, they’ll often slide up the line after the hook set, allowing you to reposition the hook and catch multiple fish on one bait.

Banded Killifish

In the Mid-Atlantic they’re called killies. In New England they’re mummichogs. Down South they’re mud minnows. Regardless of the various regional monikers, banded killifish are terrific baits for a huge variety of species. These small fish are unique in that they can live in fresh, brackish, or saltwater. Even if you trap them in pure freshwater, they can be transferred to water with a higher salinity level and they’ll stay nice and wiggly on the hook.

Compared to shiners, killies are also much heartier. You don’t even need to keep them submerged in water. All you need is a small cooler with some ice on the bottom covered with saturated newspaper. As long as their gills stay moist, they’ll stay lively. Pinned through the lips and hung under a bobber in freshwater, they’ll catch everything from bass to crappies, and pickerel to perch. Used in the salt in combination with a jighead or bucktail jig, they’ll get slurped by everything from flounder to redfish to seatrout to striped bass. Killies are widely available in bait shops on both the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts.

Bluegills

Most of us learned to fish by chasing bluegills. They’re easy to catch, abundant in most places, and some might even say they’re kind of cute. But make no mistake, they’re on the menu of a lot of big, mean, not-so-cute game fish.

Assuming local regulations allow it, the next time you’re out targeting bluegills with the kids, bring an extra rod that’s slightly heavier than what you’d need for panfish. Let the tykes catch a juicy 3- to -5-inch bluegill, and then pin it on a 2/0 baitholder hook through the back just forward of the dorsal fin on the heavier rod. Add a large bobber a foot or two above the bait and heave it out as far as you can. If pike, pickerel, or bass share the water with those kid-friendly bluegills, don’t be surprised if that big bobber takes a dive. Larger live bluegills also make exceptional baits for trophy flathead catfish and muskies. 

Crickets

Live crickets are available at most inland tackle shops throughout the South, and they make outstanding baits for bluegills and crappies. Although they aren’t as common in bait shops in the Northeast and Midwest, swing by a local pet store that sells reptiles and you’ll find all the live crickets you need.

Read Next: What Do Bass Eat?

Crickets, however, are delicate. They’re best delivered on light line and tackle, and you want to pin them on a very fine wire hook. Even then, they don’t twitch and wiggle for very long. The good news is that even after they die, fish will slurp them right up. 

Frogs 

The rules regarding permits, collection, and limits of amphibians in your state must be checked before heading out to the pond with a flashlight and net. But if you’re in the clear, it’s hard to beat the rush of a live frog getting taken down by a big bass, snakehead, pike, or pickerel. 

Frogs aren’t dumb, and they go out of their way to avoid exposing themselves to predation, staying in the lily pads or in the shallows of the shoreline. This means that if a frog finds itself in wide open water, it’s going to swim like mad to reach the safety of the vegetation or bank, and the kick and wake produced during that swim is like a dinner bell for big fish.

Simply pin a frog through the bottom lip and out the top lip. There’s no need for weights or bobber; just cast the frog and let it do its thing. If you don’t get any strikes, most of the time the frog can be unhooked and set free with minimal damage. Of course, what you really want is to see a hole open in the water as Kermit is violently sucked under. 

Sand Fleas

Sand fleas, which are sometimes referred to as sand crabs, are abundant along much of the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts. There’s a strong chance some of you even collected them as a kid during beach vacations, as they thrive right in the wash where waves lap the sand. These gray, bug-like crustaceans have been staple baits in Florida forever, as they’re a choice offering for surf-dwelling targets like pompano. Throughout much of their range, however, they’re often overlooked for many other species.

In the Northeast, for example, flounder and striped bass will cruise tight to the beach to gobble up sand fleas. Drum and croakers in the Mid-Atlantic can’t get enough of them. Though you can collect them by digging with your hands (don’t worry they have no claws, and they don’t bite), a sand flea rake makes gathering a bunch faster and easier. Run the hook through the rear of the shell and send them out into the surf with a bank sinker that will roll around with the push and pull of the waves. Just don’t cast too far. Gamefish know to come in close when they’re looking for these crunchy treats. 

Madtom Catfish

Ever heard of a madtom? Don’t worry if you haven’t. Many people aren’t even aware that these tiny catfish exist, though ironically, madtoms are the most abundant family of catfish in the country. Because they’re so small, rarely exceeding 5 inches in length, they’re not targeted with a rod and reel, hence the lack of fanfare around them. However, big bass and trout will hammer these little whiskered fish if you’re brave enough to use them.

Brave is actually a strong word. Cautious is more like it, because madtoms have needle-like spines on the leading edges of their pectoral fins that puncture skin easily and inject a mild venom that can make the wound very painful for a few days. Point being: Handle madtoms with extreme care.

They’re most often found in small streams and creeks with plenty of flat rocks for them to hide under. Flip a rock with one hand while simultaneously sweeping a dip net under the rock with the other and you’ll come up with some madtoms (assuming they’re plentiful in your local waters). They can live in a bucket for a long time, and all you have to do is run a hook through their lips. You can fish them weighted on the bottom, under a bobber, or free-line drift them through runs and holes where big smallmouths are likely to lurk. 

Mealworms

If you live in a part of the country chock full of trout streams—stocked or wild—you’re probably already hip to the mighty mealworm. These moth larvae are widely available in tackle shops and pet stores, and often come in small containers packed with saw dust.

What’s great about “mealies” is they mimic a wide variety of natural forage. To a fish, they can look like an inchworm, a caddis larva, or a little grasshopper that fell in the water. They can be red or gold in color and (unlike garden worms that need to be refrigerated) mealworms can survive for months in the pocket of your trout vest or on a shelf in the garage. In fact, if you let them go long enough, they’re more likely to turn into moths than die. Whether you’re after panfish or trout, simply thread a mealworm onto a tiny hook and send it out weighted or under a small float.

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Anglers aboard the offshore boat “Sensation” got the disappointment of their fishing lives when they weighed what would have been a tournament winning blue marlin during the prestigious 65th Annual Big Rock Blue Marlin tournament out of Morehead City, North Carolina on June 17.

Their 619.4-pound blue marlin was big enough to unseat the current leader of the event that weighed 484.5 pounds. That fish was brought in earlier by the boat “Sushi.” The tournament’s prize for biggest blue marlin was worth $3.5 million.

But the boisterous crowd that welcomed the “Sensation” anglers at the weigh-in site soon became quiet when an announcer on a live speaker said, “It would appear that this fish has been bitten by a shark.”

Tourney personnel spotted what appeared to be multiple bites to the fish, according to the local Jacksonville Daily News. Such a mutilation of the catch would disqualify the marlin in the tournament, according to tourney rules that adhere to IGFA procedures for sport angling.

Tournament officials waited until Sunday morning to declare a winner in the event, with 271 boats competing for $5.85 million in total prize money.

On June 18 tournament officials made their decision and posted it on the tournament’s Facebook page:

“After careful deliberation and discussions between the Big Rock Rules Committee and Board of Directors with biologists from both NC State Center for Marine Sciences and Technology and NC Marine Fisheries biologists as well as an IGFA official, it was determined that Sensation’s 619.4-pound blue marlin is disqualified due to mutilation caused by a shark or other marine animal. It was deemed that the fish was mutilated before it was landed or boated and therefore it was disqualified,” the statement read.

“The Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament follows IGFA rules regarding mutilated fish as outlined in Rule 23 in the Big Rock Official Rules. IGFA rules state that the following situation will disqualify a fish: ‘Mutilation to the fish, prior to landing or boating the catch, caused by sharks, other fish, mammals or propellers that remove or penetrate the flesh.’”

Officials declared the “Sushi” crew the winner of the tournament for its 484.5-pound blue marlin catch.

In saltwater angling parlance, gamefish that are mutilated by sharks or other toothy predators are said to be a payment to the “tax man.” Unfortunately for anglers aboard the “Sensation,” the tax man’s bite meant a horrific hit to their tournament winnings.

Capt. Greg McCoy of the “Sensation” told the Washington Post he was shocked about the mutilation rule, and believed that after a long and tough fight to boat the fish they were winners of the tournament.

“It’s the final hour, the final day and we fought with him [marlin] for six hours,” McCoy told the newspaper. “It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

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