"They Call Them Young Gun's....."

We all sit back from time to time, and reminisce of what it was like to be "young" again, what more you would have done, and many ponder what they wouldn't have done. But on the other hand, there's the type of person who sits back and wonders "I wish I knew as much about fishing when I was 18 when there was actually fish around as I do now." And rest easy knowing that there is a few young men out there that are living that dream, to be able to capitalize on incredible catches at a younger age , and in much tougher fishing conditions than most others ever experienced in their life-times. One thing is certain, the life of the land-based angler has become increasingly difficult over the years, with the population boom, the prices of gas going up which give more anglers the incentive to try to fish from land-based structures, all mixed with the biggest factor which is that there is just too much pressure on fish from anglers, and not as many fish as there was even a mere ten years ago. So captures of large specimens, especially, from land, and becoming rarer and increasingly difficult in this day and age. That is where the story begins of Team Rebel's phenom Viktor, and where his most recent adventure began and the feat he accomplished, which when I was his age I would have died to duplicate along with many others that actively participate in the sport we have been bringing back from the brink of extinction in the last ten years, with a new vision and goal than the grandfathers of the sport ever had.

The event began last night, when I recieved a phone call from Viktor , telling us at Shark Command Central that he was going to embark on a shark fishing trip into new territory that had been scouted but never tested. I reluctantly declined due to the fact that I had family in from out of town I was visiting with, but I expressed my enthusiasm toward his game plan for the night and wished him and his small undersized crew the best of luck on their endeavor.
 

Viktor and Mike rounding up some bait to freeze for the month

Around 9:15 p.m. I was jolted out of a daze in the middle of a four hour family bore-fest with the whaling guitar ring tone of Zakk Wylde signifying Viktor was on the other end. When I answered I was surprised to hear one of his crew-mates on the other side of the line. He franticly told me that Viktor was "Hooked up big" with a fish they had been battling for a mere five minutes. This is usually not a big deal when the "Shark Hotline" rings, but I was then informed that the fish had not stopped taking line from the hook set and the situation was looking grave for them and what little line was left on the spool of his trusty 12/0. So naturally I gave them a couple of quick tips to try to hold-off on what seemed to be an inevitable spooling for the little guys and told them to keep me posted. I hung up the phone and my cousin Anthony who is an avid fisherman was in-town from New Jersey asked me what was going on, after a short explanation we both came to the corporate command decision we were heading to the location to intercept the battle ensuing 45minutes north of us. We bid farewell to the family and hit the highway while on the phone with one of Viktors henchman giving us live updates as we headed down the highway to try to make the best time possible to help in any way we could with the safe capture and release of this alleged beast.

After a dangerous ride that took 25minutes off the usual trip, we arrived at location-x with some water an ARC de-hooker, and an extra fighting harness, only to find Viktor still on the brink of defeat with only a couple hundred yards remaining on the reel and two people holding the rod up with their shoulders so Viktor wouldn't be pulled to an almost certain watery Grave.

I asses the situation and quickly recognized two problems that had unfolded during the battle, number one being that Viktors 130lb frame could not fit into the harness, and number two the rod tip could not be raised high enough due to the size and the strength of the kids holding it up on their shoulder. This was all on-top of the fact that 600 of the 800yards of 130lb on the reel were still out in the black abyss of the surf somewhere.....

After a short dialogue, we decided the best thing to do to help right the situation was for Viktor to unclip from his harness and transfer the rod to me in my harness while everybody tried to tighten and knot the harness so it would stop slipping off Viktor in the fight. The rod transfer went off without a hitch , while I made a valiant attempt to turn the fish and begin winching down and gaining line on the monster for a few minutes before we hooked Viktor back up and the battle was back on.

Viktor leaned back as my cousin and I took turns holding the rod up under the heavy pressure of a drag that was set to terminate for the next 45 minutes while the fish's will was gradually broken and began to inch its way closer towards the coastline. From North to South the beast kept cutting the coast without much change in action, that was until it headed straight down the beach to a degree I had never seen before. Viktor pivoted his body to match the actions of the fish until he was at a point that both his shoulders were directly parallel with the water and the condos, all this while the fish still had over 300yards of line to its advantage, but the angle of this run was so severe that over 100yards of that was residing over dry land.

The fish's will had finally broken and began to do exactly what we wanted it to do, run right at us up the trough while Viktor put his cranking power into over-drive, pushing himself physically in a place he had never been before. The moon had still not risen and the fishes dorsal had finally surfaced in stride right infront of us against the blackened horizon in the calm, humid summer night air. The sight of the large black dorsal fin was a quick, and un-mistakable I.D. for the denizen at the end of the line, but I still shouted "HAMMER!" anyways to echo my excitement to the skeleton crew with us.

I quickly stripped off my boots and shirt and made a dash for the shark with a tailrope in hand to subdue its tail and drag her into the shallows with the assitance of my cousin and brother who decided to make the trip to our location after our arrival.

Viktor quickly un-strapped from the harness to take finally gaze upon the fish that had pushed him to every limit possible over the course of the last two hours, a beautiful and very healthy female hammerhead around 12-12 1/2ft in length.

We worked quick as usual to remove the hook and a few short photo-ops before it was time to let her go back to her dark and watery home to begin her normal life, and normal routine once again, and to perhaps start another little hammerhead family next season.

From the landing to the release the estimated time that this big girl was under our control was maybe a minute and a half, we are very cautious for the fish's well being all the time but especially when dealing with Hammer heads, as time is a crucial part for the safe release of this species. But just as we have many time before, we watched the 3ft tall sickle fin slowly head offshore and eerily dissipate into the mysterious and silent ocean water never to be seen again.


Make no mistake about it, this was Viktors night and nobody else's, I am just here to tell the story. He really showed his true colors and stayed very cool in a very intense situation where most people would have cracked and lost the fish. Believe it or not, these fish don't come around that often, especially of this size and magnitude. Many land-based sharkers wait their whole life to be able to land on of these un-stoppable fish from shore, and many never get the chance to do so. Viktor is very lucky to be able to accomplish these angling feats at-all, never mind his age, this is an incredible catch for anybody at any time and I salute him for that. I wish when I was his age I knew as much about fishing as I do now, and I wish I listened to certain people about ways to catch this monsters instead of being a hard-headed teenager, but that's where Viktor is different, he has listened to what we have had to say and instead of trying to take the hard path like I did he made the right decision, and that's why he is not only the best sharker to my knowledge at his age, but a world-class angler all around, and thats why he is part of Team Rebel. This year has been like no other for us, as I get older, life gets in the way and I can't fish as much as I use to, but cherish the time I can get out more than taking it for granted like I use too, and I cherish monumental catches like this much more than I use to as well. These giants don't come around in peoples lifetimes, and we have been fortunate enough to catch two of these monsters this year which is unprecedented within the land-based community. I wish I knew then what I know now, and I know for Viktor this is a beginning of a legacy, influence, and a savior of a dying sport here in Florida which once flourished across our coast-line.


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!