Fishing the Keys: Sweat, blood, slime, blender drinks and shark attacks

Sandbar shark

After hammering my amberjack, the shark lingers near the surface for a second or two, as everyone aboard stares in stunned silence. Then Murphy, who sees such shark attacks almost daily, expresses some surprise at just how dramatic that one was. “It was a big lad, too,” he says. A second later, I notice there’s still tension on my line so I give it a tug. The shark takes off, and my rod arcs, as the drag begins to scream.

“Uh, skipper?” I say. “Any suggestions?”

“Just hold on.”

“There’s no way I can land this thing, is there?”

“Never happen,” Murphy says. “But before it breaks, try to get back as much of my line as you can.”

So I hold on, as five, 10, then 15 minutes pass. Gradually, the runs slow down, and I gain back some line. And still no bite-off, despite the relatively feeble 40-pound flouro leader. Murphy offers me a fighting belt to take some strain off my back. After 20 minutes, the runs stop and the sonar clearly shows the fish holding at 100 feet. It feels like I’m holding an anchor. Time to finish it, one way or another, Murphy says.

I begin to pump and reel, prompting several more runs, but 10 minutes later the great fish—a full-grown sandbar shark—is alongside the boat. Murphy says it’s “every inch of six feet long” and probably 200 pounds. As a three-time winner of ESPN’s Madfin Shark Series, he should know. And now we can see what had happened: When Jaws struck, the jig somehow popped out of the amberjack and, against all odds, caught perfectly in the shark’s lip, outside its fearsome teeth (above). Murphy says he’s only seen a hook-up like that a couple of times in 25 years.