During the early years of my career, “Wild” Bill Skinner, a Mexican trophy bass and South American peacock bass fishing outfitter came fishing for bull redfish with me at Sabine Pass, TX Anyone who has spends time with me in the Gulf will eventually hear about sharks. Bill lit up when when sharks were mentioned and shared an interesting story of a giant shark.
“My family did deep sea shrimping off the Texas coast out of Port Aransas. And after we culled, I used to love to fish for sharks when I was a kid. There would be hundreds around the boat sometimes,” Skinner said.
One year, he made a special giant hook and chain with the goal of catching a really big shark.
“Everyone else was asleep and I caught about a five-foot blacktip. I put it on the hook and chain and lowered it down in the super clear water. We were pretty far out in the Gulf,” Skinner said.
“There were a bunch of sharks swimming around it and then all of a sudden they all left-quickly.“
Skinner said an absolutely massive shark appeared and grabbed the hooked shark.
“It grabbed it in the middle and there probably wasn’t more than a foot or so hanging off each side of this giant shark’s mouth. It began to rock the boat and everyone woke up. We had to break the chain off. It was scary and years later when ‘”Jaws” came out I just knew that’s what I had seen that day,” he said.
It’s a wild story for sure but Bill was a sincere guy and I have no doubt he encountered a huge shark of some kind on that day in his childhood.
Could it have been a great white or maybe even a massive tiger?
interestingly, the Aransas area is where we have the only great white shark records I am aware of for the Texas Coast during that time period.
Fisherman’s stories tend to get bigger as time flies. And shark stories got a lot bigger after “Jaws” and all of the knock-offs that followed.
At least Bill didn’t blame it on a megalodon!
That seems to be the silly scapegoat for all of the mysterious giant shark reports these days.
Chester Moore
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