These Florida rednecks were actually trying to hide this...

....and for good reason, this is possibly the second world record they've taken from their secret spot.



MILTON, Fla. (FOX 13) - This is the one that didn't get away.
A pair of Florida fishermen reportedly pulled in an 11-foot, 805 pound shark from the Gulf of Mexico.

The story went viral after someone spotted the fishermen at a gas station. The shark was in the back of a pickup truck. It was posted on social media and quickly spread.

The Pensacola News Journal reports that the men are cousins, Earnie and Joey Polk. They spent about an hour wrestling the beast last Tuesday.

The shark is a Mako – one of the fastest on earth. Alarmingly, the men caught the shark while standing on the shore. They say it was only a few hundred feet from where they were standing.

The catch may be a new world record for land-based shark finishing. Interestingly, the old record was held by Earnie, and many in north Florida want to know his secret spot.

But the Polks don't want to give away their special spot for fishing, so they haven't disclosed the exact location. In fact, they said they were hoping to keep the catch relatively under wraps.

That didn't go as planned.

Fla. fishermen snag giant shark

 

I probably should have posted this in the News section, don't know what I was thinking.

 

No big deal? You've got to be kidding. So how many 800 lb Mako sharks have you caught?

 

I just think it's hilarious that they were trying to 'sneak through town' with that thing in the back of their truck!

I wonder if Mako shark is good eating....

 

It sounds like these guys were 'snagging', not bait fishing.

The wife and I run trot lines and limb lines on the river and it's not too unusual to catch large Buffalo suckers or Flathead catfish, It's getting them in the boat that's the trick!

 

It must have been a shortfin mako, they would be in big trouble if it weren't; and sounds like they're good eating, wow, there's a lot of meat on an 800 lb fish..

OVERVIEW

There are two species of mako shark: shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) and longfin mako (I. paucus). Shortfin mako is the more common of the two and is the commercially important species. In fact, U.S. fishermen are prohibited from harvesting longfin mako in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean due to their current depleted population levels.

Shortfin mako shark is the most popular species of shark to eat. They’re caught by several nations in subtropical and temperate waters around the world. In the United States, they’re mainly harvested incidentally in longline fisheries for swordfish and tuna in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Because of their high market value, shortfin mako sharks are usually the only sharks retained in the pelagic longline fisheries that incidentally catch sharks. Nevertheless, U.S. harvest of Atlantic shortfin mako shark is only around 5 percent of the overall harvest of this species in the North Atlantic, and management limits domestic harvests through annual quotas. Conservationists and foodies take note - a key federal law prohibits the practice of "shark finning," where valuable shark fins are removed and the remainder of the shark is discarded at sea. In the U.S. Atlantic shark fisheries, sharks must be landed with their fins naturally attached to the rest of their body.

 

Sucker meat is delicious but boney. You ever can them? I've heard the canning cooks up the wye bones and they're very good canned. My intent is to can Buffalo sucker one of these days (when I get aroundtoit).



My Romanian SIL and I have had success targeting them in the past.

 

Are these white suckers? Do you know the species?

 

This is a stringer of (mostly) white suckers my wife and I gigged many years ago:



Do you all gig them?

 

Is this a "bulkhead" cat?