No hook, no line, no sinker. No lie.
Using their bare hands, Cody Harlan, Jonathan Cook and Robert Trutt hauled in a 277.7-pound bull shark Thursday morning.
“It was stupid, but a good memory,” Cook said as he recounted details of how they got the shark to the beach. “Leave it to three rednecks.”
See a photo gallery of the catch. >>
Harlan and Trutt of Fort Walton Beach and Cook of Mary Esther hit Okaloosa Island about 7 a.m. to fish for pompano. However, they never wet a line.
After they got to the beach “we saw what looked like a piece of driftwood in the water,” Trutt said.
But it was moving in the waves and the men thought it could be a dolphin. However, it eventually bellied-up.
At that point they knew it was a shark, but thought it was dead.
“I wanted it for its teeth,” Harlan said.
He cast his pompano rig out to try to snag it. When that failed, “we sent that bait out there,” said Cook, pointing at Harlan.
Harlan waded out about chest-deep and grabbed the shark’s tail. It never really made a move, and Harlan started pulling it back to shore. When he got the shark back about knee-deep in the water, Trutt and Cook helped drag it up on the beach.
Once they got the shark on land it started to move.
“It started opening its mouth like it was gulping for air and moving its tail,” Trutt said.
“We realized we had bit off more than we could chew,” Cook added.
Not knowing if it was legal to take the shark, they called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
“We were told anything over 54 inches is fair game,” Cook said. “I got my Nike bat out of the truck and knocked her out.”
Eventually they discovered about a 40-pound chunk of Jack Crevalle in the shark’s maw. They figured the shark might have been choking on the fish.
Once the shark was dead, it took them about 90 minutes to pull it from the beach to their truck. They then took it to HarborWalk Marina to weigh it, and quite a crowd gathered as it hung from the scale.
The shark measured 105 inches,
The men got it with “no hook, line or sinker,” Trutt said.
After several photos, they loaded the shark back into the truck.
Its next stop?
“Cut the head off, steak it up, soak in buttermilk and throw it on the grill,” Cook said.
They also are breathing a sigh of relief.
“I feel like an idiot now,” Harlan said of going after the shark. “He wasn’t dead.”
“The only thing that saved us was it had a fish in its mouth,” Trutt added.
“Otherwise we could have been its dinner,” Cook said.