1500 lb Great White Shark caught on Fly Rod || Southern California || San Onofre from Kameron Brown on Vimeo.
It was a day dedicated to chasing pelagic on the fly with my best buddy Bobby Harrison (and myself, Kameron Brown). Water has been extremely warm and fish have been caught close to shore, about 10 miles from San Onofre’s Power Plant.
We were fishing this nice paddy when we saw a smaller one just 100 feet away. We drifted this one a few times before limping over to the next one. Keeping my fly line in the water, we putted over to the paddy and sure enough…. there was a HUGE dark blob under the paddy…. We thought it was a small whale or a giant Mola. As the blob neared up, his silhouette sharpened and I just about fainted. A 1500 lb Great White Shark just swam under our boat, investigating as it passed…
I immediately dropped my rod and pick up the GoPro to see what I could capture. I lost my breath when I saw the shark headed straight for our boat. Wishing I had a longer pole, I had to reach over the rail and submerged my hand in the water.
We thought it was a Mako Shark but after reviewing the footage… We has guesstimated this to be a giant white shark.
It turned at the stern of our boat and either ate my fly, or intercepted my fly line perfectly in its teeth….. bbbbbbbzzzzzzzz my line was zipping through my guides and I came tight on what I initially thought was kelp….. then quickly learned that I had seriously pissed off a massive white shark and it started beelining it into the depths.
About 5 minutes or so of fishing the fish, I realized I was about to donate an $80 fly line as I saw sections of backing I never thought I’d see…… and to top it off, we had tuna boiling just off the bow on a massive school of bait fish…..
Life lessons learned….. don’t ever dive kelp paddies and don’t ever start surfing
