The Guy Harvey Ultimate Shark Challenge (Mission Accomplished!)

Well its a wrap! The first ever Guy Harvey Ultimate Shark Challenge is in the books with great success! Myself and Chris of Team Rebel had an invitation extended to us from the masterminds of the project (The Paxton Brothers) to have yet another meeting of the "Unholy Alliance" at the Grand Championship leg of the tournament at Mote Marine Lab and aquarium in Sarasota. Needless to say we packed the truck and headed west to see what this was all about.

 We packed the Ol' Cheyenne up and made the four hour trek west to a place where the sand is white and the people are friendly, needless to say when we arrived at Mote marine Friday night we were not disappointed at what we walked into.

 Deep in the bowels of Mote on Friday Sean and Brooks were doing some last minute film editing during the captains meeting, and before the kickoff dinner, to have some streaming footage in the large emmirgent cinema for the weekend. Shortly after they Shark Brothers ran down with Capt. Robert Moore and Dr. Robert Hueter to give the speech for the opening ceremony just before dinner and drinks in the court yard courtesy of Mote Marine. Because at 6 am it was game on, a mad dash for the remaining five teams to get their shot at the $10,000 cash prize for first place.

Naturally after a long drive and a lot of catching up with our brothers on the west side of town, we did not rise till much later in the day. We arrive at Mote Marine, but not before taking in some sights around the town for future reference.

  Shortly after our arrival I received a phone call from Sean (who was on one of the research intercept vessels) informing us to go into the cinema there and wait for the live feed. The live feed which was sponsored by Verizon and Fios, was simulcasted LIVE from Seans camera into the cinema, so that all the tournament patrons could view exactly what was happening on the water during the anglers hook-ups and during the research teams satellite tagging process. This was the first time this has ever been done in a tournament and if I do say so myself it was a HUGE SUCCESS! To be able to see what the anglers and researchers were seeing themselves, at the EXACT SAME TIME was incredible! Everybody was awestruck by this whole operation and how it went-off so smoothly!

Shortly after this final broadcast of a 7ft 2in hammer head which was caught by Team Pole Dancer, the boats all returned back for food and beverages under the chickee after a long day of hard fishing in the brutal Florida sun.

 Here we had great conversations with very important and influential people within the global shark community, such as Wendy Benchley, Robert Hueter and his research team and anglers like Bucky Dennis. There was a good time had by all as well as some great information passed between all party's there, but there was still one day of fishing left.

 Brendon and his Girlfriend Taylor also made an appearance at the gathering under the chickee, and they were finally able to meet the other half of the "Unholy Alliance". After a few quick photos which were snapped by Andy (The owner of Andros boat works) we parted ways for the night so everybody could get the proper amount of sleep for the final day of this shark challenge.

We went off an pursued some of the night life down in Siesta Key area and decided to turn in somewhat early ourselves, but this wasn't before we realized that we had some brake pad issues on the truck , which is never a welcome thing on a vacation. We knew this problem couldn't wait until we made the journey back home, so we devised a plan of attack to tackle this issue as quickly as possible, more importantly before the tourney ended the next afternoon.

 After a quick stop at Advance Auto Sunday morning, we limped over to Mote Marine Lab,aquarium,and brake center and set-up shop. Found a nice shady tree out in the back parking lot and took care of the problem in just about an hour, so needless to say the vacation was back on!

Fishing the final day was much slower than the first, with a few smaller sharks being caught and one bull shark was satellite tagged. We met the flotilla back at the Mote docks nestled in the mangroves in the back of the property and extended our congratulations to the shark bros. and the rest of the team for a job EXTREMELY well-done.

 After a few more post tournament beverages at the chickee, we all headed into the cinema to watch the crowning of the first ever champion of this benchmark shark tournament.

We at Team Rebel want to congratulate Team Pole Dancer as the first ever champions of the Guy Harvey Ultimate Shark Challenge! On day one of the tourney they took a commanding lead with two 7ft class hammer heads, both of which were satellite tagged and are now roaming freely, alive and well somewhere in the fertile waters of Tampa Bay!

 Sean,Brooks, Dr. Hueter and Robert all went up and gave their closing thoughts on what this tourney meant to them, and what it meant to shark fishing in general. Sean and Brooks then proceeded to keep it very METAL when Dr. Heuter made them both honorary Mote Marine research team members, thus adding a fitting ending to an amazing show!

 Afterwards we met up with Sean, Brooks and the rest of the team in the hotel room just in time to watch Kerry Sanders NBC Sunday night special on the tournament (which was broadcasted nationally).

 Everybody raised their glasses to a toast for the great success of the tournament all while everybody gave their first hand experiences from land to sea on how everything went down, and how people reacted to the whole event. Afterwards we all congregated and began to celebrate the rest of the night with all the people that made this great event that only a year ago was just an idea, become a smashing success in reality!

 The night was fun and full of light heartedness shark conversation and ideas for next year ( Which I will add right now, Team Rebel will be going nautical to take part of this event the next time around) and soak in what had just happened.

 After a late night we turned in, only to awake early to Sean informing us we needed to help them transport their newly aquired Anti-shark cage back to "The Shark Tank". I will say that is wasn't the most fun activity the next day after a late night, but if one thing the "Unholy Alliance" does better than anybody else, we keep it Metal. And what can be more metal than transporting huge, heavy pieces of heavy metal for shark diving purposes? NOTHING, that's why we prevailed as usual. After dropping the cage off, we took a quick photo-op with our west side brothers and said our goodbyes, not before thanking Sean and Brooks one last time and extending one last congratulatory handshake before we made our trek back across the Everglades to the East Coast, and back to reality.

Sean, Brooks, and the rest of the Ultimate Shark Challenge crew, excellent show, a lot of fishing firsts that are credited to you all, and thanks again!

Can't wait till next year! (Though we will be fishing!)

-Team Rebel

-For more information on this ground breaking tournament click on the link below

The Ultimate Shark Challenge

And to track the 4 sharks that were satellite tagged in this tournament follow the link below

Ultimate Shark Challenge live shark tracking

SteelHeadQuarters Reaction to Team Rebel's Site Launch

Our freshwater counterparts to the north in good ole' Buckeye land did a very nice post about our website , as well as a write-up on our latest catch and release effor that has turned the angling world upside down. Big shout out goes to Herb Imondi (the site owner and steelhead master!) For the kickass write-up1 Hopefully we can one day soon hit the stream or the sand to wet some lines and pull some trophys up together! Hes a great guy that runs a great site! Check the write-up out as well as his entire site, a lot of cool info on there!

STEELHEADQUARTERS/TEAMREBELSITE.COM

 

But for now Team Rebel is Western bound for the finale of the GUY HARVEY ULTIMATE SHARK CHALLENGE! Stay tuned for a report from the tourney as well as the re-unification of the "Unholy Alliance!"

Until Next time.....

Team Rebel Out!

Team Rebel Report- " A Giant Roams the Coast "

     And here we are again, the tenth year of the new millennium, how fast time has gone? Again in early January we begin to come out of our winter hibernation that was full of a whole lot of nothing except football, and beverages. Time to get in shape for the next season ahead of us, the heat, the fish, the journey as usual. We begin our quest as we do every season, by bringing out the small gear to intercept the late winter/early spring black-tip migration down the coast. But this year, this migration was much different than ever before due to the long and prolonged winter we "endured" here in Florida . This year we saw snow flurries in the south, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of non-native, exotic wildlife carcasses littering the canals, as well as native brackish water species like snook and tarpon floating down endless mangrove shorelines in the backwaters. So with the end of winter we didn't know what to expect, the El Nino had lifted its spell off of us finally, and there was fish in places they shouldn’t have historically been in late January. The two strong black-tip strongholds to the north where the vast majority of the big breeders congregate were barren wastelands, and the fish held for over a month solid even south of where we are located, which in my 12 years of shark fishing I had never seen before. The water was much too cold to sustain anything of reasonable size, so we thought...

    We decided to take advantage of the fish close to home for a change, with just terminal casting gear, we set off to the areas that they were holding up the thickest in, and promptly proceeded to take the fish to the woodshed. Between me and two other team-mates, in a 1 1/2 week period, fishing about 3 hours from dusk until night after work, we captured well over 150 and never even had to get wet. The action was insane night after night, putting 25 on the beach in one single night in the middle of our brief stint.

   But one the last day we were in our full on pursuit of the schooling tips, we headed towards another spot we had heard they were holding at a bit thicker than the beaches we had been fishing. We arrived an hour or so before dusk and began setting up our rigs to start the mayhem all over again. But suddenly I heard a large splash come out of the eerily still and silent ocean behind us. As we turned we were stunned to see a large sickle-fin ripping across the surface only 200yds off the beach and a black-tip breaching the surface with blood pouring out of its lacerated side. The hammer was relentless in its putsuit,until the tip finally slowed down enough for the beast to finish the job it had started. All this as we watched helplessly with out 20-50lb bottom rods. That’s when we knew it was time to go fish this spot. Just to the north of a deep port with warm water flowing out of the inlet from a power plant and deeper water close, it all made sense. So we went back to Shark Command Central and began gearing up to chase the ghost of a giant that we figured may have already moved on.



   We quickly got on the phones and started calling around looking for a bait source, a big problem due to the fact that we hadn't been in touch with our bait suppliers for a couple of months at this point. But a good friend of ours Jim, whom is a respected Charter boat Captain, was kind enough to enlist the service of a 50# fresh amberjack for our quest ahead. We spent the rest of the Thursday night rigging all of our gear and dusting off harnesses, cleaning drag washers, and greasing reels and rollers for the suspected task ahead. I made some calls to see who was interested in this journey the next night, and was able to enlist the help of long time friend Brendon, and his girlfriend Taylor. But nobody else was really interested, everybody thought we were just blowing off some steam to try to get everybody out of their winter hibernation early, and the other friends who were there when this event occurred, had to work, so needless to say we were short handed. But luckily there was Tyler, a student at the local university here, down from Connecticut for the spring semester, which happened to find us on Boatlessfishing.com and expressed interest in what we do. But as always we are weary and not to quick to take just anybody fishing with us, but from the conversations I have had with him he seemed like he was pretty genuine, and gave him the call to come fish with us for the night, even though his short experience with land-based shark fishing ended with black-tips, he was another hand on the beach that had a good attitude which is always a plus.



    Friday at 6 in the afternoon we loaded up the gear and drug it the 300yds on this seemingly endless beach to the surf line and began setting up our camp before dusk, on a night we will all never forget. But that wasn't before a quick photo-op with the bait of the night.

    We began to deploy baits at sundown on the three rods we brought, all 14/0s as usual, the trusty American Workhorse. But soon after our baits were dropped we began, to realize we had a problem, apparently through our tunnel vision with dreams of hammers we forgot about the black-tip infestation in the area, and quickly started hooking into the little guys like it was our job. So about after an hour of that mess I decided to put a big piece of the AJ out, in hopes to keep them off the baits for at least 30 minutes.

Tyler Hooked-up

 When I paddled out and dropped the big piece of bait and came back to shore. I was shocked to find that the reels have stopped going off every 30 seconds as they previously were, we thought that was a bit odd but didn't pay any mind to it at the time. The Amberjack slab soaked about 250yds off the beach for one hour, then two hours,and then hour 3 rolls around, with still an erie silence. Even the rods with the smaller baits haven't made a sound; we were just hoping baits were still wedged onto our hooks at this point. It was getting cold, Two of us were soaked, the wind had picked up and the newbie had never been in a kayak, nonetheless on a black night in the winter where a North East wind started blowing up the Atlantic over the course of the past few hours making kayaking a chore now.

 I sat fixed in the chair at the North end of our camp, with my 14/0 being the last rod in the spread about 20ft away, just watching and staring in silence for a couple of hours at this point. I turned away for a second to check the time on my phone and when I peeked back over my left shoulder I saw my rod starting to make a silent and steady bend before the clicker rang out. I jumped out of my chair and made the short sprint towards the rod. When I picked up the rod I watched the line creep off the reel at a pace that was similar to that of a man walking down a sidewalk with no where to go. I counted to 7 and threw the reel into gear, and cranked tight with a couple of rotations of the handle before I threw the rod over my shoulder and headed West towards the condos. And this is where it all hit the fan....

    I was stopped dead in my tracks in full stride like nothing I have ever hit before.
I spun around and yelled for Tyler and Brendon to strap me into the harness, which they did very fast and efficiently.

    As fast as this all occurred, that’s how fast the line was coming off the 14/0 at this point. It was a very alarming rate of speed, one to that of which I hadn't seen in a few seasons. I looked up and down the beach and saw nobody in any direction except Brendon, Taylor, and Tyler, and a decision was going to have to be made in a couple of seconds. Over 300yds have disappeared off the reel in about a minute or so now, so I told Brendon to get a knife ready to cut the line, because I wasn't going to be strapped into a harness when the 130# mono runs out abruptly at the uni on the hub on the spool. So I sat there and looked next to me, Brendon with a knife in his hand, and standing next to him was Tyler, both with bewildered looks in their faces. There was 150yds left on the reel at this point, and on a whim I looked over and yelled

"Drop the knife, get the tail rope and clip it onto my harness, because we are going to turn this son of a bitch!"

 

 I set the drag to terminate with 1/4 spool left, so much that I was beating the star down with a pair of pliers. Smoke was coming out of the drag now, and it was time to man up and hope all our connections were good to go. I began to lose my footing and Tyler leaned back on the rope connected to my harness with everything he could as I leaned back with everything I had....

And all of a sudden, the line stopped coming off the reel, and we had a stale mate, Not an ideal situation with 600yds of line out and little to play with. If the line snaps, I'm going to need facial reconstructive surgery at this point in time. So I leaned back and never let off, while Tyler on the rope did the same. This was a stale mate for ten minutes, and then all of a sudden we began to gain line. Then we couldn't keep up with the slack line. It was making a kamikaze run right at us!

   


If there’s one thing I have learned about giant sharks over the years, the ones that usually spool you, you stop. But when you stop the beast, they run right in at you, not allowing you to keep pressure on them, therefore letting them get the second wind to head North on you and its game over. I wasn't about to let history repeat itself again, like it has to us so many times and hundreds of others over the years. This isn't acceptable anymore and it was going to end now!


    I reeled like I never had before, and I have cranked on some big ones before but nothing like the power this fish had. I caught up to the fish about 50yds before it ran into the beach. And for a split second we saw what appeared to be a dorsal cut the top of the water against the pitch black night-time horizon, and it was headed South. And when we finally came tight to the fish it was running the first gut slow but steady. The drag was still hammered and we had a full spool of line now. We weren't worried, but after about 15 minutes that spool was beginning to look pretty empty once again, so it needed to be stopped before we were out of line and out of luck.

 We employed the "pull on the rope and hope it turns" technique once more and after a stale mate for a short minute it turned north headed against the current now. We knew once the fish headed in front of our camp this was going to be our opportunity to end this fight.


           

After another ten minutes or so the fish passed right in front of us, in a steady stride running only 15ft off the beach in 4-5ft of water and was taking a little bit of line on its last attempt to escape capture. After about a 50yd run north against the current, the  fish turned and started headed towards me. By this point I was alone in the harness and Tyler, Brendon and his g/f Taylor were waiting their chance with the rope to get a shot at subduing the fish in the now rough surf break. The fish was only 3-4 ft from being run aground and I was tight with her. I saw a big wave coming in and I made a split second decision to pull back with all I had. When I timed this pull, with the wave it washed the Hammer right onto the beach. When it thought it was going to make another run we hit it with a sneak attack.


    They roped the beast as quick as they could as I dislodged myself from the reel and ran towards the two as they were screaming for me to help them. When I ran into the wash I couldn’t believe what I saw, and the size of what it was.

Only two things went through my mind at this point, number one being get the fish back in the water as soon as possible, number two being snap as many pictures as possible!



When the fish washed up it washed up on its side, and it took all three of us about 40 seconds, with everything we had to get the big girl upright for her safety.


The waves were making this a hellacious experience, with the hammer getting hit by the raging surf now and throwing us around like rag dolls as we tried to clip leaders and get a few pictures before the release.

No time for measurements because this Hammers safe release was the only thing going through our heads. But we were severely undermanned for this task to handle a fish of this magnitude with only 3 guys, one being a newbie on his first "big shark" trip.

We finally got her turned around and it took all 3 of us, with running starts tugging on the rope, AND waves getting water under this fish to finally budge it. We spun her around, and a large wave blindsided us and blew us all backwards,we lost a hat, tail-rope and an Iphone to that wave. But I got up as quick as I could with the flash light, and when I peeked over the next wave I was happy too see a giant sickle fin cutting westward through the wash at an amazing pace still. She made it back alive thank god!



   This catch will not by forgotten by any of the four of us who got to be part of this unbelievable catch. From the second I saw the rod bend, the abrupt silence of the hoards of black-tips, to my leg shaking uncontrollably when I first got in the harness (which hadn't happened to me for years). I had a feeling inside me from the start that this was going to be our chance to be part of the sports rich history. And to be able to land a hammer of this magnitude from a beach, to our knowledge has never been done before. I’m not going to sit here and say how big we think it was (weight, or length). Everybody can make their own judgment on that. All we know is the best gauge we have to compare this too was the 12'1" Hammer captured by Team Oldskool that is now the ILSFA world record. That fish perished in battle, it was 9'9" fork, an exact 6ft girth around. And their fish weighed in at 755 with the formula that has a 6% margin of error, with the hammers being on the high side of that due to its weird appendages. So in the end you be the jury.


    Well we will call this our "fish of a lifetime" for now. Because a fish is only a fish of a lifetime if you let it be that. As for us, we are headed back out to chase another giant, bigger and badder than even this big girl. We are just pleased that she got to swim off with her pups to help the population. So, until next time, tight lines....


-Team Rebel out!

The Shark Brothers response to our website launch!

   Sean and Brooks Paxton, better known as the infamous "Shark Brothers" globally. Were nice enough to do a write-up on our new website launch recently. They really hit the nail on the head on what Team Rebel is about, what we do, and how we hang. Brooks and Sean are cast from the same mold as the personalities in Team Rebel, and look forward to breaking down some doors and smashing barriers with them in the near future. And we cant lose focus on the two reasons we do what we do....

    #1. Because its fun, thats why we all fish, isn't it?

    #2. Because we are here to make fishing METAL, blacker than the blackest night times infinity!!!

Don't ever forget those 2 reasons, and life will be good!

Now.....Click, Read, and Enjoy!

and have a Metal day....

Rock On Rebel Nation!!

The Shark Brothers Write-Up

Black-Tip Challenge... Setting the standard for Land-Based Shark Tournaments!!

 What a crazy week this was in early 2009! Team Rebel did in-fact compete in the tournament, just to come up short with a "broken" sandbar shark about 7ft that we didn't even measure to qualify it. But nonetheless we and everybody else fished their hearts out for 7 days in some brutal surf and cold weather, that decided not to subside until the final day of the tourney. But what makes this tourney so special in its own right, was that this was the FIRST land-based shark tourney that REQUIRED, not only to catch the sharks, but accurately measure them (fork,overall,and girth) and tag them for the sharks to be able to qualify in the competition. Making this the first tournament to incorporate all those features into one. Again hats off to Josh Jorgensen,Sean , Brooks Paxton for orchestrating this tournament, and running and filming it very efficiently. We were very glad to take part in this event, even with our lack-luster performance, we decided we would rather discuss which metal bands were more influential within the genre than catching giant sharks this week, but in the end its all good! We were just proud to contribute to this tourney and the TRAILER for the 2nd Annual Black-Tip Challenge, and the Head on Collision Crash Course for LAND-BASED SHARK FISHING!!

    SO.........Sit back, relax, grab a cold one or a loved one, and check out this preview of the Black-Tip Challenge. And brace yourselves for an information overload of some of the most bad-ass sounds ,scenery, and sharks for the tourney!

So now , WE INTERRUPT THIS ADVERTISEMENT TO BLOW YOUR MIND!!