HUGE shark story!!!

[thecrab87]

Since I've got this entire month off (and all of December too), I've been diving my ass off to make up for the last three months of hell. The only bummer is that I've had to make all my dives solo, since everyone is working. I went out on Monday and did OK, got a fat kumu (goatfish) and my biggest uhu of the year (with my 85-cm Aimrite railgun too! sweet gun).

I've never had the time to spend to learn how to hunt octopus (tako or he'e in Hawaii), so I've been spending some time learning how to do this, learning how to find their holes, etc. I got 3 on Monday, the biggest was almost 4#, a personal best.

Sorry about the pic quality, I had to take these of myself with my cell phone... no computer access for me just yet.

[thecrab87]

I took Tuesday off to do yard work and rest my legs, since I dove for 5 hours straight on Monday. I finished mowing my lawn today and headed down to Baldwin Beach Park late this afternoon. Once again, I couldn't find anyone to dive with so I was forced to go solo.

I jumped into the dirty water and headed out. I didn't find anything really interesting, but I poked a few small fish just to have something to fry up tonight. I was almost to the outside reef when I broke the band on my 3-prong pole spear... bummer. I pulled in my tagline, which was anchored to the bottom, to find... no floater! What the hell! My snap clip was open and my floater was nowhere to be found. I started quickly swimming with the wind chop with my head out of the water scanning for my floater.

I finally spotted my floater to my right heading... upcurrent. Well, dammit. I knew what that meant. The surface viz was horrible, about 20 feet at best. Before I got the floater in sight underwater, I could see a large tail thrashing about. When I finally got up to my floater, I was greeted by a large hammerhead, about 10 feet long, with my Riffe floater stuck on its head. My stainless steel stringer was lodged in its mouth. Well crap! How the hell was I supposed to get my $170 Riffe float back? Fortunately, I had taken my speargun, an 85-cm Aimrite carbon fiber railgun, off of the floater earlier. After trying a couple of times, I gave up on trying to pull the floater off of the shark... too much of a chance of gitten bit on the hand. So, I swam up to him and plugged him with the railgun.

The spear went clear through to the other side of his head, and it was on! I clipped my tagline to the butt of my speargun and let the shark run. After thrashing around for a bit, he started to slow down, and I was able to get close enough to hit him with the 3-prong. Every time I would poke him, he let loose with a huge cloud of blood. After going round and round and bleeding out gallons of blood, he finally slowed down enough that I got my floater back.

At this point, he spun down to the bottom 25 feet below. The viz was about 35 to 40 feet top to bottom, so I could clearly see him but not much else outside of the circle of hazy water. I unclipped my rope tagline and tied it to the tail of the now gently thrashing shark. Using my 3-prong to keep him from turning and biting me, I carefully pulled my shaft through his head and headed for the surface, where I unclipped the shooting line from the gun.

So there I was, on the surface, holding my 3-prong and my speargun, breathing up to go down and grab my spear and pull the shooting line through the shark....

That's when... the MOTHER OF ALL TIGER SHARKS moved into view. She glided in from the far side and sniffed the hammerhead shark. Now bear in mind, the hammerhead was a big shark, about 10 feet long and about as big around as if you made a circle with your arms with your fingertips touching. The tiger glided over the hammerhead and turned up towards me. For what seemed like an eternity, she moved towards me as I pedalled backwards and away. God her head was big! It was well over 3 feet wide. She finally turned, headed back down, and munched the hammerhead. What stands out in my mind is how very small that hammerhead looked in her mouth.

The only other shark that I've seen in this size class was that great white that I saw while diving with Bill Mc last year.
http://www.geocities.com/haolecrab/santacatalina3.html
This one produced the same response in me... time to be somewhere else. I swam straight to my float, unclipped my rope tagline, grabbed my floater, and headed straight for shore. It's not so much the length of the shark (and this one was near the same length as the great white... 16 to 18 feet long) as it was the GIRTH. The head on this thing was just huge.

It was a long swim back from the outside reef in that murky water, believe me. Fortunately, I only lost my shaft and my rope tagline. If I had lost my carbon Aimrite gun I would have been sick. I finally made it in and crawled over the inside reef, as it was now low tide, and splashed into the inshore water. I didn't mind losing the shaft and tagline, but I was a little bummed about losing my fish as I now had nothing to take home (I suppose taking home all of your limbs is not bad!). I swam about another 5 feet and found a fresh tako hole. Right on! A short while later, I had a 6.75# tako on my stringer, a new personal best. My goal had been to get one over 5#, and I cleared it by a good margin! Again, sorry about the quality, the pics are from my cell phone.

Back to the ocean tomorrow..........

[DaKahuna]

Willie, man, you have to get a waterproof camera!
Though I'm not sure how well the shots would have come out, being shot through that brown cloud you probably made....
When else would you have ever thought that being in the water with an injured 10 ft hammerhead made you safer!
Glad that Tiger went for the injured fish, and not the puny human.
Yeah, with your luck, definitely need a camera, and a POWERHEAD!

[KeiNine]

NUTS!

Glad you're safe and are able to tell us another great story.

[Dragginfish]

OMG!!!

Okay I have seen Hammerheads and don't really have a problem with sharks but MAN HAVE YOU GOT BALLS!!! Let's see - I can't get my float back so I guess I will go kill something twice my size!! What are you thinking!!

OH - LOOK there is some thing 3 times my size and she is hungry!!!

You sir are "Da Man!!"

This is a great story!! I am going to point the Florida boys to your Thread!!!

See You at the Bottom

Dragginfish

[kill shot]

Willie, Great story!!! It seems that all the work you have been doing lately has really built up some aggression in you to have the BALLS to do something like that. Glad you are safe. Now stay that way so we can here more of your stories.
Eric
Nice tako by the way.

[mcbas]

GIANT Balls man. I've had a few run-ins over the years but compared to yours my sharks were babies. I must confess my heart was pounding, I can't imagine being in your shoes for those two encounters.

[smilinmatt]

Every shark encounter I've had, I always imagine the shark thinks "too big to eat" when it's sizing me up. Must be a different feeling when a shark looks at you, and thinks you're too small to be worth eating.

Was there ever a point when you thought, "there's no way I'm letting that tiger shark get away with my tagline - time to reload the Aimrite!"?

[cptbonnett]

All I can say is... DUDE!

[El Cid]

Holy sh*t...you've got some cojones alright! No need to prove that one!!

I was thinking you were going to say you got your spear back, plugged the tiger, subdued both of them bare-handed and swam them back to shore, then drank a gallon of everclear and raped an entire island. And revealed yourself to be Chuck Norris. If I were you I'd do some research of my genelogy, you might have some Chuck in you...

[dmay]

There's a fine line between courage and completely f@ckin psychopathic and you, my friend, are on the fence.

Great Story!!!

[bryansnarked]

Great read this morning. Hope all is well Willie. Wish I was in Maui, I'd dive with you for sure. Isn't that the first tiger you've seen?
-Bryan

[Man-O-War]

Originally Posted by ElCidm07

Holy sh*t...you've got some cojones alright! No need to prove that one!!

I was thinking you were going to say you got your spear back, plugged the tiger, subdued both of them bare-handed and swam them back to shore, then drank a gallon of everclear and raped an entire island. And revealed yourself to be Chuck Norris. If I were you I'd do some research of my genelogy, you might have some Chuck in you...

I think I just broke a rib laughing!!!!!

As for the Haolecrab, glad you are still in one piece man!

[JLittle44]

Holy sh!t man. Ho Ly Sh!t...

[primalpete]

At what point did the thought cross your mind " I think I'm gonna shoot this hammerhead with my 85cm gun".
Sweet story. I got the tiger shark eating the hammerhead visual from that show with Jean Michel Cousteau, when they dove in that place with all those reef sharks and that big ass hammerhead at the wounded reefie.