Man bites sharkBy LAYLAN CONNELLY
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The Orange County Register
updated 12:15 p.m. PT, Wed., July. 30, 2008
About 45 minutes into the fight the 10-foot mako got really mad.
The blue, 750-pound shark leaped about 15 feet out of the water – not the kind of graceful jump that Shamu does, but a flailing, get-this-hook-out-of-me type of jump that ended with a huge splash.
Rheonna Lasiter, 13, sunburned from a day at sea, turned completely white. Rheonna and her little sister Cayla, 10, screamed.
"They kept asking 'This is normal, right'?" said their father, Jeff Lasiter.
"Everything is fine," he told them.
But…
"We were thinking 'oh no'."
In search of a big mako
The three fishermen made a pact: If they catch the big one, they'd feed the hungry.
That was a very, very big "if."
The friends had been trying for a year, pitching in for gas and bait so they could hop on their friend Matt Potter's 28-foot boat, "Topaz." Lasiter and fisherman Julian Solis had met Potter through his shop Mako Matt's Marine tackle shop and fishing charters in Huntington Harbour.
They don't mess around with the small stuff, and don't even bother putting line in the water for 5-footers.
"That's our idea of conserving fish," Potter said. "We don't hook unless we want to catch them."
To attract sharks, they use chum – ground up bits of fish – that can weigh up to 500 pounds.
Before getting out to sea, they plot out a plan of action if the big one shows. Lasiter is the lookout and backup. Potter drives the boat. Solis takes charge of the rod.
On their latest trip last Sunday, the fisherman – along with Lasiter's two daughters – departed from Huntington Harbour about 2 a.m.
Once they got near Santa Barbara, they waited.
About 3 p.m., the people on the boat saw 50 birds simultaneously dart away from the chum they'd spread over the water's surface. Something below spooked the birds. They didn't return.
"There's a big shark out there," Potter said.
Lasiter saw something down below, a large dark shadow.
"A big mako!"
"How big?" Potter asked.
"HUGE!"
They put out their monster rods to wait, with hooks the size of a man's palm and as thick as a pencil. They threw two large tuna filets into the ocean to lure the shark closer.
Ten minutes passed. Then the boat shook, just a slight rock.
Then the lure rattled, and the fight was on.
Potter jumped behind the steering wheel to help move the boat, so the mako didn't jump in, as they've been known to do. Solis slipped on a harness to support the pole.
Meanwhile, Potter told the girls how to call the Coast Guard – just in case.
"They were ready for battle, too," he said. "They were giving me water."
They battled for about three hours. They moved the boat around to confuse the shark. The mako, in turn, would dive deep, trying to shake the line. At some point, the hook slipped out of the shark's mouth, only to wrap around its tail and hook its back end.
Solis was praying.
"I hope everything goes OK," he recalled thinking. "It might be more than we bargained for."
About dusk, as he was nearly out of line, the fighting stopped.
They eventually got the mako to the water's surface, tied a line on it, and drug it back to shore, where they weighed and measured it.
Further up the coast the same weekend, a mako shark fishing contest was held with the winner coming in at 746 pounds. At 750.4 pounds, Solis said the fish he and his friends landed would have taken first place.
Is that a shark on the freeway?
It didn't matter that it was 1 a.m. by the time they got back to Orange County. The men called Ken Williams at New FishAll in Gardena. Williams is their source for chum, and he was the only guy they knew with a freezer big enough to hold the mako.
And, for his part, Williams was motivated to pick up the phone - he knew where the shark meat was going.
Not able to find a truck big enough for the shark, the fishermen asked a friend to ditch his boat and plopped it on his boat trailer.
Driving down the 405 freeway hauling a 10-foot shark caused a lot of brake lights and honks.
Solis understood the attention. "You don't see that every day."
The next day they spent hours chopping. In the end, the mako was turned into 350 pounds of solid meat - enough to fill a bathtub.
And a lot of empty bellies.
By Tuesday afternoon, filets were being barbecued at Calvary Chapel WestGrove in Garden Grove, to be hauled over to Sigler Park in Westminster, where Williams has volunteered for years to feed low-income families.
"We've been praying we'd get a fish so we could do this," said Williams.
Not just spaghetti
Joshua McGookin, 9, looked at the shark meat and shook his head. He pinched a small piece and sniffed.
"Come on, try it!" his mom urged. "See if you like it."
He put it in his mouth, chewed and cringed
"I liked it a little bit," he said.
Ana Marin, of Westminster, had a different reaction.
"I'm going back for seconds if they let me," she said.
Most of the adults who gathered at Sigler Park were stoked on the change. Each Tuesday, hundreds of hungry families gather here for the Feeding La Sheep program, where they are given a free meal, clothes, and anything else they might need. Usually, the menu is hot dogs or spaghetti.
Jodie Seguine, who founded the program eight years ago, opened a Bible.
Jesus fed 5,000 people with two fish and two loaves, she explained, citing a verse from Matthew.
"Here, we fed 500 people with one mako."
Jon Vincent, 55, knew the shark was a treat, and that a mako filet fetches big bucks on the market.
"I'm very thankful," said Vincent, who was disabled after a car accident and hasn't been able to find work.
All the meat the fishermen brought – nearly all of their catch - was gone by the night's end. They watched proudly as their catch was gobbled up.
Matthew Murphy II, who volunteers handing out food, said they were worried about what they'd feed the people because they were low on funds this week for food.
"These guys show up and say: "Merry Christmas."
URL:
Man bites shark - News - MSNBC.com
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