This is not a small fish. Elliot Sudal, a Florida fisherman, landed this 13-foot tiger shark after hours of fishing off Captiva Island in an area known as Boca Grande Pass (on Florida’s Gulf side near Fort Meyers). The area is known to be home to an abundance of large sharks eating on the tarpon runs that occur there.
“I had one Bonita left that had already been soaking for 12 hours,” he wrote, “figured what the heck why not and floated it off by the pass. Five minutes later, it gets smoked. It was the heaviest, most consistently unstoppable run of my life, not even slowing down at full drag. This wasn’t my heaviest setup either, it was an 80 rigged more for boat stuff.”
Sudal apparently hooked the fish on a sandbar but after getting down to 100 feet of line, had to jump in the boat and work on the big fish “marlin style.” Sudal is a shark advocate and actually works for shark preservation, according to his website. He catches sharks, tags them, and takes blood samples as part of a program for the National Marine Fisheries Service Apex Predator Tagging Program. He apparently tries to catch most of these big fish from land but this beast proved too much. Sudal works up and down the Eastern Seaboard on his shark projects and is the founder of the Nantucket Shark Tagging Club, “which works with NOAA’s Apex Predator Tagging Program to promote shark conservation, tagging, youth education and teaching anglers to safely catch sharks from the beach.”
After reeling in this giant fish, he released it back into the sea. Male tiger sharks can reach 13-14 feet and females can reach up to 16 feet. “It took off like a champ,” he said. “Unreal experience, largest shark I’ve ever caught, or even heard of being landed here. Tiger sharks are a rare species to see here, and it’s a great sign at how strong the shark populations are returning after the red tide this summer.”
