Originally Posted by Grumpop
...First thing to say on that is that bulls are real real dangerous critters. They thrive in the shallowest waters and even fresh waters. They are incredibly aggressive and in the Bahamas where I bonefish the native population never swims even in the gin clearest and shallowest waters in the middle of the day without a wary eye out at all times for a bull. They don't circle and cautiously approach like in National Geographic. They come fast, straight, and hard to eat you if that is what they decide to do. I have been reading all summer of the sharking adventures on here and I'm amazed that I haven't read of a single bull in all that time. Then again they may be the ones accounting for the descriptions of the sharks easily pulling away from all efforts to hold one.
Anyhow we did this in the summer because we were bored with summer fishing. The trout fihermen off Deal Island were reporting lots of half cut trout coming up. We brought what we thought was a good strong shark rod on board. As soon as we arrived on the scene a guy in another boat offered us a live bluefish of about 4 pounds. I hooked it in the dorsal and my buddy began to drop the anchor. While the anchor was still dropping I was paying out line and there was a thud and then a steady walking off of the line. The blue had not made it 10 yards out of the back of the boat. I remember thinking "Boy these little fish stealers must be thick in here." So he stops dropping the anchor and I flip the lever and stick him two, three, or four times real hard. And off he goes steady but not screaming. Our first task was to clear the flotilla of trout fishing boats which we did. It was 600 pm and hot hot.
So now master angler here is going to set up on this toothy stealer and whip him but quick. And I did to the point that my arms and upper body were quivering. I was exhausted in the heat but I remember announcing "I've got 'em comin' my way now" as I could see that he was coming to the surface about 30 yards from the boat. When he came to the surface our mouths dropped open. He looked like a submarine surfacing and surprisingly brown. He looked much longer than the 13 feet he later measured and 345 lbs. he later weighed as crazy as that sounds. It was right then that I realized that he had been towing around our 23' boat and not the other way around. The only smart thing to have done would have been to cut him off right then and there. But we did everything except make that smart decision. See no one had ever even heard of a shark like that in that area of the bay and we were not going to be stuck for life telling the unbelievable "fish story" of the shark we lost big as a submarine. "Yeah, right. Grab these boys another beer. That's some story." There is much more to tell between 600 pm and 400 am about all this which includes how that shark traveled and clung to the deepest water available to him at all times. How I came to discover how many handguns are on boats in the lower Chesapeake in the middle of a weekday night. See my buddy like adult beverages and became convinced that we needed to shoot the shark. Lots of people out there thought the same thing and they had the weaponry. I was sober and was the only voice saying that if we kill it with a gun it will sink and it obviously weighs far in excess of your line breaking strength and we'll lose it. We only went my way on this one because of bad aim and not because of a good persuasive argument. At one point I thought I was going ot get killed by a bullet glancing off the surface. When we finally landed the shark you could see that at least one bullet entered his head but it seemed to have no impact on him. The reel completely blew up (a big Penn, and I never had one of theirs fail before or since) when the bearings went at about 200 am. We landed this creature in the shallow water near South Marsh Island at about 400 am. by tying a rope to his tail and hauling him into the boat with about 4 or 5 people. We took pictures of us with him hanging from a chain lift in a car garage and during one of those at about dawn he swung his head in my direction. Unbelievable. As we had no gimbel I was black and blue from the butt of the rod for weeks. I slept all that next day and had to take off the day after that. I have the jaws which you can step into up to your waist. I've said many times since that it was like being hooked to the devil himself. And that story ended any interest I had in landing a shark. Swim on.
If you don't get a flesh eating disease you will be eaten by a shark. 
Big time news - man bites shark.
