‘It was a brutal fight.’ Alabama fisherman catches bull shark that could set state record

Four experienced shark fishermen went out to sea aboard the 39-foot orca well before sunrise on Sunday. The four buddies participated in the popular Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo from Dauphin Island on the Gulf Coast, near the mouth of Mobile Bay.

“We were about a mile off the coast of Mobile Bay in 30 feet of water and at 4:30 in the morning we hooked a huge shark,” said Tommy Bowyer. Outdoor living. “He ate a three-pound piece of jack crevalle. I was the fisherman and that was the beginning of a long, two-hour battle.”

Bowyer battled the hard-pulling shark for two hours, much of the fight taking place in the predawn darkness. Bowyer fished a Penn International reel with 150-pound test monofilament, wire-to-cable leader and a 10/0 circle hook.

“It was a brutal fight,” said the 23-year-old from Foley, Alabama. “I’ve been commercial shark fishing since I was 15, and I’ve caught a lot of big ones. But this bull is the biggest I’ve ever caught or seen, and it was the most fun to catch.

“Finally, at 6:30, we got a tail line on the bull. We have hydraulics on the orcabecause it’s a commercial fishing boat. We used it to hoist the big shark up, over the transom and into our boat… Luckily the shark was dead when we got it on board.”

In addition to Bowyer, three other members of the Bon Secour Butchers team were on board: boat owner David Stiller, Adam Lyons and Michael Maguire. It was early in the day when they reeled in the bull and they considered fishing for tiger sharks for longer. But they realized the shark was exceptionally large and likely a Rodeo winner.

So the fishermen decided to return to the weigh station on Dauphin Island. They got back so early that they had to wait for the facility to open. They guessed the shark would weigh around 350 pounds and were shocked when it officially weighed 494.5 pounds.

“The biologists who weighed my shark said it was probably a state record for bulls,” Bowyer said. “They helped me fill out a record book application for the catch, and it’s in the process of being accepted by the state.”

Alabama’s current state record bull shark weighed 448 pounds 4 ounces and was caught in June 2015 by Jeff Moore of Birmingham. Bowyer’s nearly 500-pound bull shark should easily surpass Moore’s 2015 catch, though it must be officially accepted by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources before it becomes a state record.

Participants in the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo have a reputation for catching record-breaking sharks: Last year, an angler at a tournament caught the state record tiger shark, which weighed 1,019 pounds and broke a record that had stood since 1990.

After the shark was weighed and positively identified as a bull, they opened up the fish’s belly and found large chunks of a blacktip shark estimated to weigh 40 pounds. (“That bull ate pretty good,” Bowyers says.)

In addition to securing the potential state record, the Bon Secour Butchers received a check for $6,000, plus other prizes. Bowyer’s shark was taken by marine biologists for study. Bowyer says he won’t have a reproduction made of the animal, but he did have its enormous jaws cut out.

Biologists serve as rodeo judges and use the sharks caught in the tournament to study species in the Gulf. They are particularly interested in large sharks, which they say were relatively rare until recently. Overfishing of sharks in the 1990s led to strict federal and state restrictions on shark catches over the past 30 years. Some scientists now believe that catch restrictions have allowed sharks to grow large and abundant. Research published in March reported a fivefold increase in baby bull sharks in Alabama’s Mobile Bay.

Many anglers and beachgoers say shark populations are now much higher than ever before. Some are calling for relaxed catch limits to protect the public from the threat to public health and the loss of fish to hungry sharks.

Still, Mississippi State University professor Marcus Drymon says there aren’t many large sharks lurking along the coasts. Where they are present, they help keep smaller sharks and stingrays in check.

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“There are a lot of sharks now [and some] “There are also big ones,” Bowyer said. “There are a lot more sharks than anyone who doesn’t fish for them or go out into the ocean knows. It’s by far the largest shark population we’ve ever seen.”