ABOUT SHARKS, STRUGGLES; HARDSHIP AT SEA NETS RECORD MAKO.Byline: Brett Pauly Daily News Outdoors Editor The sweaty, three-hour battle with the beefy beefy, beefyness 1. in dog conformation, used to describe overdevelopment of musculature in the hindquarters. 2. in cattle, used to designate the desirable physical conformation of a beef animal, but an undesirable character in dairy cattle. denizen An inhabitant of a particular place. A "denizen of the Internet" is a person who frequently uses the Web or other Internet facilities. would have all been for naught if the crew of three didn't make the 7 p.m. weigh-in deadline. The mako shark mako shark Any of certain potentially dangerous sharks (genus Isurus) in the mackerel shark family (Isuridae). Two species are generally recognized: the Atlantic I. oxyrinchus and the Indo-Pacific I. glaucus. Makos range throughout tropical and temperate seas. was so huge - eventually tilting the scales at a pending state-record 582 pounds - it was slowing the private vessel Great White Hunter Great White Hunter is a phrase coined in the late nineteenth century as a reference to white men who explored the remote lands of those times, typically in pursuit of big-game hunting in Africa and Asia. to a grinding 5 knots per hour. It was after 6 p.m. Oct. 3 . . . and 14-1/2 miles to home port and tournament headquarters in Marina del Rey. The numbers didn't add up. ``Oh my God,'' gaffer Hunter von Leer of Marina del Rey said after Venice angler Bill Tittle initially hooked the beast. ``This is a tournament; I wish it was a smaller fish. We really had to hustle.'' With time running out, Tittle, von Leer and Fariba Zand of Marina del Rey, who skippered the vessel during the fight, devised a plan. Using a block-and-tackle rig, they hoisted four feet of the 10-foot, 5-inch fish and some of its 66-inch girth GIRTH., A girth or yard is a measure of length. The word is of Saxon origin, taken from the circumference of the human body. Girth is contracted from girdeth, and signifies as much as girdle. See Ell. onto the transom. The result: With the shark water-skiing on its belly and the boat managing 27 knots an hour, the team made it to port with 8 minutes to spare. It took a dozen men to drag the fish onto the dock and to the scale. Not only would the catch win the two-day Mako mako (mä`kō), heavy-bodied, fast-swimming shark, genus Isurus, highly prized as a game fish. Also known as the sharp-nosed mackerel shark, it is a member of the mackerel shark family, which also includes the great white shark and the For Dollars event and earn the team $7,000, it nearly doubled the weight of the state-record mako - a 298-pounder caught at Anacapa Island in 1970. ``It's one of those things you read about other people doing, and, all of sudden, it's you in front of the flashbulbs,'' Tittle said. To put the catch in perspective, the second heaviest mako in the tourney was 101 pounds. Early in the contest, von Leer, who practices sight-fishing, an unusual tactic for shark anglers, determined that only makos he estimated at 65 pounds or heavier would be cast into the chum slick a mile off Palos Verdes. Five makos finned finned adj. Having a fin, fins, or finlike parts. Often used in combination: single-finned; multifinned. to the boat's swim step; all were deemed too small to compete for the tourney title. It was a different story when the big fish appeared. ``When my girlfriend saw it, she thought it was some kind of whale,'' said von Leer, a character actor whose signature role was B.D. Calhoun, the mercenary who shot J.R. on ``Dallas.'' An 11/0 hook on 400-pound leader and 80-pound line was buried into a 5-pound slab of skipjack skipjack: see herring. (cryptography) SkipJack - An encryption algorithm created by the NSA (National Security Agency) which encrypts 64-bit blocks of data with an 80-bit key. and tossed to the fish, which promptly engulfed it. ``My knees just started knocking, and they didn't stopped knocking until the next day,'' von Leer said. Tittle was more concerned with his upper extremities. ``My arms were just hurting so much,'' he said. ``I told (my teammates), `Take the rod. I don't care.' But nobody touched it, because the fish would be disqualified for the record (since assistance from other anglers is strictly forbidden). When it was all over, I'm very glad they didn't.'' Afterward, the shark was cut into steaks and paperwork was initiated to apply for a state record. That's as far as the paperwork will go. The largest mako ever caught on 80-pound line is a whopping 1,022-pound specimen taken off New Zealand New Zealand (zē`lənd), island country (2005 est. pop. 4,035,000), 104,454 sq mi (270,534 sq km), in the S Pacific Ocean, over 1,000 mi (1,600 km) SE of Australia. The capital is Wellington; the largest city and leading port is Auckland. in 1990, according to International Game Fish Association records. CAPTION(S): Photo PHOTO (Color) From left, skipper Fariba Zand, angler Bill Tittle and gaffer Hunter von Leer combined efforts to boat a 582-pound mako shark a mile off Palos Verdes. Special to the Daily News |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion