Besides those occasions when we buy one on the subway, we rarely are anywhere where we could come face-to-face with a shark. NJ angler Tom Rostron, Jr. is someone who actively seeks out sharks, but even he thought it was too early in the season for any real action when he went scouting with a friend this week on the Manasquan River. That is until a 303-pound, 8-foot, 4-inch mako shark leapt into the bow of his 31-foot boat...and tried to eat the boat.
Tom Rostron, Jr.
“It was epic. He back flipped right in,” said Clint Simek, who was out with Rostron on the boat off of the Jersey coast Tuesday. They were scouting optimal fishing spots for a series of three upcoming fishing tournaments, one of which has a grand prize of $25K. “It’s real early in the season for sharks. Usually you don’t go shark fishing with only two guys in a boat,” Rostron told Asbury Park Press. “But Clint and I wanted to pre-fish the tournaments. We had no intentions of boating the biggest fish we ever have.”
“At first we were in shock when he was in the boat. Then he started thrashing and we were like ‘Oh My God, we have a big problem, this thing is going to eat us,’ ” Rostron added, saying wood and Fiberglass filled the air as the shark smashed with his tail and bit with its mouth. “He just chomped it all up,” he said. This mako was the first caught inshore this season as far as Rostron knows. “Pretty amazing. Probably never going to happen again in our lives,” Rostron said.
