5-29-11 An Unusual Catch! Big Fish!

We left in the morning on the BNM with Bill and his son Mark for a Daytime Swordfishing Charter. The wind was blowing a little bit, so we took our time getting out. We caught 10 decent sized mahi on the way out, 4 to 10 lbs, before making it to the sword grounds. We make our first drop, and after about 10 minutes of waiting, we see a whack. We hook the fish for a few seconds, but he comes unglued. We check the bait, and its all mangled up. We drop back down, drift an hour, but no bites. We decided to move out to a little deeper water and send down a fresh mahi strip. After about 10 minutes I see a bite, and then it takes off like a freight train! We have over 2000' of line out when we hook it. After about a minute all the Tuf-Line is off the reel! 3600' of braid and its still going. The fish takes off another 1000' of monofilament backing. We look at the spool and see the gold. We have close to a mile of line out when we stop the fish, with only a few feet left on the reel! We lock the drag completely up and cup the spool. After a few minutes we gain an inch! After 10 minutes we have about 100 feet of line on the reel. Mark starts making progress... Very slowly. Inch by Inch! We were very close to the breaking strength of the line and knots without question. After and hour we have the first 1000' of monofilament back on the reel. I felt much more comfortable when we got the Tuf-Line Braid on the spool. Mark continues to make progress the next couple hours. Something seemed funny though, it just didn't act like a typical sword. I told him you never know what you're gonna hook down deep though. After 3 hours we have the fish 500 feet away. The last 30 minutes Mark never lets up and after a total fight of 3 1/2 hours we look over the side of the boat and a 500 lb THRESHAR SHARK pops up! It's the first one I've ever seen. It wasn't a sword, but it was quite a catch. We shoot a few pictures of the tired out shark and set him free to fight again another day. It was a Big-Eye Threshar Shark, which is the first one I know of ever being caught out of Bud N Mary's Marina! It was a fun fish to Catch and Release! Congrats Mark!