Trick or treat for a striped beast!

JDHAMMER · 2015-11-03T12:32:09Z

It was Halloween Eve and we had a good feeling as we headed down to the Keys in hopes of hunting a Halloween hammer! Captain Kevin Pagan gave us a call and met us down there. The first day's catch... As the tide switched around the sun fell down. A few baits were put out at Long Key and there was four hits but nothing landed that night. The next morning we trolled live baits down the bridge, Mark got a 20lb jack and Kevin and Calvin got three cudas. The tide started to switch so we gave Seven Mile a shot. Calvin caught a 4ft shark, his first ever. We all put out a piece of cuda and not too much time later Kevin's rod takes off fast and steady; when he set the hook, the distinctive T came out of the water and that Halloween hammer was on! It burned off several hundred yards of line and got on a lobster trap. The 9-10ft shark was lost to say the least. The tide switched and we went to get food and left Mark. A blacktip hit the same bait three times but never committed. Later that night Mark caught about an 8ft lemon; on the same tide and every bait that was put out got hit. We still had hopes that the hammer from earlier might still be around so we pulled out the old dual/tandem rig and lowered down that big jack that Mark caught with a breakaway float and sent the bait a little ways out, unfortunately the hooks pulled out out the bait when trying to pop off the float. The fortunate thing was that we had a nice shark to put out for bait. Within an hour or two something kept picking that bait up and dropping it. After the 5th time we finally hooked it. She burned drag then got stuck on a lobster trap. With the combination of two rods with 200lb test we pulled the total combined weight almost straight up and down then we saw the huge unmistakable eyes of a legendary and rare toothy critter: IT'S A TIGER!!! Shortly after, the trap came loose and we started walking her down but then the tide changed so we passed her under to the other side to walk her down easier then passed her under again to get her to the seawall. The money shot! She was 8FT even, but surprisingly fat, we think she ate the jack we lost too. Tiger sharks are very resilient,when we let her go she swam away fine.