Hair Raising Hammerhead Encounter While Offshore Kayaking!!

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Devodud
Posts: 134
Joined: Wed May 13, 2009 9:40 am
Location: Altamonte Springs

Hair Raising Hammerhead Encounter While Offshore Kayaking!!

Post by Devodud »

I don't know how I forgot to post this here, I know a few of you may be able to relate.

While two friends and I were offshore fishing on Tuesday about a 10' hammerhead shark came up behind one friend and latched onto the back of his kayak. He smacked the shark with his paddle several time before the shark released, I didn't get this on camera. I pulled out the camera and started recording. The shark kept coming back to bite the kayak again only to be fended off by the paddle smacks. The shark followed my friend closely for about 5 minutes before giving up.

Any way I have posted below my whole fishing report from another site as well as a link to the Shark Video

LTA_Yaker, Suede, and I headed down to Pompano yesterday in search of some fishing action. When we arrived we were unable to find any pilchards at the bait shops and had to settle for just 3 or 4 goggle eyes each to last all day. At the launch we found seas that were not good but not bad either. Not long into or troll out to deep water Suede double up on a couple cero mackerel, but one manages to get off. He brings the landed mack and puts it into my fish bag. In abut 140 feet of water we start to see weed mats. Under one of the weed mats I see some commotion and go for a closer look. The commotion ended up being a couple dozen small trigger fish, but under them were 2 schoolie sized mahi, we couldn't get them to bite before they left. I spot some birds diving in the distance at around 180 feet, we started heading towards them. The birds left before we could even get close but we kept toward the general area anyway. When we get there Suede trolled rat-l-trap gets nailed and his line is leaving his reel in a hurry. I turned around to watch and was just in time to see a large black fin tuna blow a huge hole in the ocean and inhale my goggle eye, the fight was on. I got my fish close to the boat, close enough to see him, and he mad a super high speed run straight down. My drag couldn't keep up and he straightened out both hooks on my stinger rig. I paddled over to help Suede with his fish, his wasn't even close to boat yet. As he started getting the fish close to the boat we could tell he had a nice tuna on as well, we could also tell he was in trouble. The tuna was swimming in circles, tangled in Suede's second line. The more the fish circled, the worse the tangle got. Eventually the fish took off on a run and the line could do nothing but break. Before Suede had a chance to feel down about the lost fish his second rod, the goggle eye, gets hammered. The lines are still tangled at this point so the 50 pound line just snapped like its was nothing. Seeing this I quickly re-rigged and sent a another goggle-eye down, it got smashed within 20 ft of the boat. The hooks did not stick very good and quickly pulled. I sent another goggle-eye out only to see it get sliced in half by a king in a matter of less than 10 seconds, he missed the hook. I set-up a rig with 2 stinger hooks, leaving hooks from head to tail of my last goggle-eye, and sent him down. I didn't even get the rod into the rod holder and my last live bait get annihilated by another king, somehow he still missed the hooks >:(. Suede and LTA had similar experiences with their live baits.

With no other choice we started trolling with artificial plugs and spoons until we reached the wrecks to start jigging. Several large bonita were caught on the arti's. We got to the wrecks and we couldn't buy a bight on jigs. I can only suspect that because the current was non existent the fish weren't hanging on the wrecks. So we started trolling again, and again we were catching large bonitas. At on point I got a huge hit on a deep diving plug, the line was violently snapped before the fish even completed its first screaming run.

Now for the fun part. We found a beautiful defined color change with a tone of floating weeds. As we fished this text book spot we continued to catch bonita and watch flying fish jumping all over. Suede casted out a shallow diving plug on his inshore spinning rod rod, only to watch the lure get smashed and all of the line disappear from his reel, in seconds. Just a few minutes after that I hear LTA yelling for Suede to look behind him. When I looked I saw about a 10 foot hammerhead shark following Suede. About the time Suede realized what was behind him the shark surged forward, raised his head from the water and wrapped his mouth around the back of Suede's kayak. I guess the shark had developed a taste for Pelican :boat:. Suede was not having any of that and like a samurai warrior began his counter attack with his paddle. The shark let go and came around for a second run. The shark pulled along side of Suede and began rubbing on the side of the kayak, Suede struck again with several precise blows. The shark tried this a couple more times, with the same result. The shark decided that he did not getting wacked on the head with a paddle and stopped. The shark hung around and followed Suede for a few more minutes before giving up. At this point Suede was ready to hit dry land, so we headed for the beach.

Below I have attached the video from the shark encounter and a couple pictures. I did not get the entire shark encounter on video because it happened so fast, but I got some.

[youtube]LTA_Yaker, Suede, and I headed down to Pompano yesterday in search of some fishing action. When we arrived we were unable to find any pilchards at the bait shops and had to settle for just 3 or 4 goggle eyes each to last all day. At the launch we found seas that were not good but not bad either. Not long into or troll out to deep water Suede double up on a couple cero mackerel, but one manages to get off. He brings the landed mack and puts it into my fish bag. In abut 140 feet of water we start to see weed mats. Under one of the weed mats I see some commotion and go for a closer look. The commotion ended up being a couple dozen small trigger fish, but under them were 2 schoolie sized mahi, we couldn't get them to bite before they left. I spot some birds diving in the distance at around 180 feet, we started heading towards them. The birds left before we could even get close but we kept toward the general area anyway. When we get there Suede trolled rat-l-trap gets nailed and his line is leaving his reel in a hurry. I turned around to watch and was just in time to see a large black fin tuna blow a huge hole in the ocean and inhale my goggle eye, the fight was on. I got my fish close to the boat, close enough to see him, and he mad a super high speed run straight down. My drag couldn't keep up and he straightened out both hooks on my stinger rig. I paddled over to help Suede with his fish, his wasn't even close to boat yet. As he started getting the fish close to the boat we could tell he had a nice tuna on as well, we could also tell he was in trouble. The tuna was swimming in circles, tangled in Suede's second line. The more the fish circled, the worse the tangle got. Eventually the fish took off on a run and the line could do nothing but break. Before Suede had a chance to feel down about the lost fish his second rod, the goggle eye, gets hammered. The lines are still tangled at this point so the 50 pound line just snapped like its was nothing. Seeing this I quickly re-rigged and sent a another goggle-eye down, it got smashed within 20 ft of the boat. The hooks did not stick very good and quickly pulled. I sent another goggle-eye out only to see it get sliced in half by a king in a matter of less than 10 seconds, he missed the hook. I set-up a rig with 2 stinger hooks, leaving hooks from head to tail of my last goggle-eye, and sent him down. I didn't even get the rod into the rod holder and my last live bait get annihilated by another king, somehow he still missed the hooks >:(. Suede and LTA had similar experiences with their live baits.

With no other choice we started trolling with artificial plugs and spoons until we reached the wrecks to start jigging. Several large bonita were caught on the arti's. We got to the wrecks and we couldn't buy a bight on jigs. I can only suspect that because the current was non existent the fish weren't hanging on the wrecks. So we started trolling again, and again we were catching large bonitas. At on point I got a huge hit on a deep diving plug, the line was violently snapped before the fish even completed its first screaming run.

Now for the fun part. We found a beautiful defined color change with a tone of floating weeds. As we fished this text book spot we continued to catch bonita and watch flying fish jumping all over. Suede casted out a shallow diving plug on his inshore spinning rod rod, only to watch the lure get smashed and all of the line disappear from his reel, in seconds. Just a few minutes after that I hear LTA yelling for Suede to look behind him. When I looked I saw about a 10 foot hammerhead shark following Suede. About the time Suede realized what was behind him the shark surged forward, raised his head from the water and wrapped his mouth around the back of Suede's kayak. I guess the shark had developed a taste for Pelican :boat:. Suede was not having any of that and like a samurai warrior began his counter attack with his paddle. The shark let go and came around for a second run. The shark pulled along side of Suede and began rubbing on the side of the kayak, Suede struck again with several precise blows. The shark tried this a couple more times, with the same result. The shark decided that he did not getting wacked on the head with a paddle and stopped. The shark hung around and followed Suede for a few more minutes before giving up. At this point Suede was ready to hit dry land, so we headed for the beach.

Below I have attached the video from the shark encounter and a couple pictures. I did not get the entire shark encounter on video because it happened so fast, but I got some.

VIDEO


The Cero Mack
Image


The Tuna Hooks

Image
Image


The Shark Bite Marks

Image


The Shark!!

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
If you're gunna be stupid, you gotta be tough!!
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krash
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Re: Hair Raising Hammerhead Encounter While Offshore Kayakin

Post by krash »

Hammerheads, and other big sharks, do just about whet ever they want... he's lucky the fish did not grab on and flip the kayak or bite a chunk out of the back... surfboards usually come back with a bite mark that is an outline of the sharks mouth.
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Devodud
Posts: 134
Joined: Wed May 13, 2009 9:40 am
Location: Altamonte Springs

Re: Hair Raising Hammerhead Encounter While Offshore Kayakin

Post by Devodud »

krash wrote: he's lucky the fish did not grab on and flip the kayak or bite a chunk out of the back...

The shark surely tried to do just that, but the angler wasn't having any of it
If you're gunna be stupid, you gotta be tough!!
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DaveR
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Re: Hair Raising Hammerhead Encounter While Offshore Kayakin

Post by DaveR »

Wow! Hair raising for sure. Good thing it was a teenager and not a cranky fat fifteen root 2000 pounder!
Thanks for sharing.
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Pirogue
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Re: Hair Raising Hammerhead Encounter While Offshore Kayakin

Post by Pirogue »

Yer gonna need a bigger boat

That was amazing. I'll bet that was a rush.
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