No bull, group lands 300-pound shark

Not one, two or even three, but four people. That’s how many it took to haul in a 300-pound bull shark Thursday aboard the 100 Proof with Capt. Ben O’Connor.

Jason Grochowski, Chris Knox, David McAdams and Tommy McAdams all spent time on the rod during the almost hour fight to bring in the bull.

The reason it took four was because they had all been doing battle all day bringing mingo and mackerel as well as tangling with a few other shark.

Capt. O’Connor said they were out about 17 miles catching mingo when they kept getting bit off by shark.

“So I asked them if they wanted to try and catch a shark and they were all for it,” O’Connor said. 

They hooked up with a couple of shark on the smaller tackle, then another a mackerel rig. After they finally got switched over to the heavy-duty tackle it was game on.

Using 100-pound main line with a piece of bonito for bait, they snagged the big one.

“When it hit, it bent the rod all the way over,” said Grochowski. “It was everything I could do to bring it up a little by little. It felt like a big boulder.”

Grochowski said the shark made a couple of runs.

“It stripped out some drag. I couldn’t hold on to the rod anymore. My fingers had started locking up,” he said.

At that point, he handed the rod off to Tommy McAdams, his brother-in-law.

“It felt like I was pulling a truck off the bottom,” McAdams said. “It would give a little head shake every once in a while.”

After about 15 minutes, he had his fill and gave it to David McAdams.

“It was just heavy. Like trying to pull a car out of the water,” David McAdams said.

When the shark finally got about 35 feet up in the water, they could see just how big it was.

“It was pretty cool,” David said.

He eventually handed the rod off to Chris Knox, who finished it off.

“I was already wore out from fishing, but when we saw it break the surface we started getting fired up,” Knox said. “We were going full board then.”

The total fight took about 45 minutes to an hour.

But they were all stoked over the catch.

“We come down once every other year … and this was really fun,” Knox said.

The group planned on keeping the shark meat as well as the jaws.

“We’ll pass the jaws around,” they all chimed in, joking that it would stay at each house about a month or so, then pass it to the next – just like the rod.