On Sunday, Steven and his grandson came fishing aboard the Lady Pamela IV with John, Jose, Rick and Rob from 1-5PM. Steven was from Texas and had been deep sea fishing a few times before, but no luck with catching any big fish. We wanted to put Steven on the fish so we started the trip trolling two planers and four top baits. There was a lot of seaweed around and it is hard to troll when the conditions are like this. We started to catch some bonitas and had a few kingfish bites. I got tired of cleaning all the seaweed off the lines so we got the kites ready with some big shark bait rigs to switch things up. Steven and Jose helped reeling the trolling stuff in and we stopped in 150 feet of water right in front of Port Everglades and popped two kites up with live cigar minnows and threadfin herring that we caught in Miami a few days before. The wind was blowing south east at 15 MPH as we got the spread out. All of a sudden a little storm rolled in from the west and I had to position the boat around and head into the wind. We sat like this for 30 minutes before I reeled in the kites because the wind was up and down. We kept the big shark baits out, I told Dave, the mate, to get the snapper rigs ready, and we were going to catch our people some eating fish because the fishing was a little slow. While Dave was inside I saw our bobber go down and I gunned the boat ahead to set the hook. Dave came running out to see what was going on and I was telling everybody to reel in the other bait so they wouldn’t get tangled in the rod that we had the fish on. Steven jumped into the fighting chair, got all strapped in, and went to battle. I have been fishing for many years out here I have never seen so much line pull off the reel in one shot. We hooked the fish in 110 feet right off Fort Lauderdale beach and the fish ran to 650 feet of water. For one hour we never saw the fish, when we did in was a true sea monster. It was a 12 ½ foot Great Gray Hammerhead Shark. Steven was very tired and so was the shark. The shark was dead when we pulled it through the transom door into the boat. It took all six guys to do so and I threw my back out in the process. The fish weighed close to 750 lbs. It was awesome.
