96 Man Against Shark 



Cass decided not to use the 9-thread line. He chose instead a 1^-inch 

 line, a length of chain, and a grapnel. When the Alberta was directly 

 above the huge shark, the grapnel and chain were lowered under its 

 jaw, then jerked upward, so that the grapnel hooked into its neck. The 

 shark thrashed, snapping the line that reached from the gaff to the other 

 boat. But the Alberta'?, line held. Cass played the fish for about 3 hours— 

 a 19-ton cruiser against a 10-ton shark. The shark was relatively lethargic, 

 but each twitch of its great body shivered the Alberta. 



Two men were sent out in a small boat to make fast two heavy lines 

 around the shark's tail. They managed to do it, though once their small 

 boat was nearly swamped by a casual flip of the tail. Now secured, the 

 shark was towed to Bimini, a 3^ -hour trip, during which the shark cum- 

 bersomely struggled against the fetter of the lines. 



Cass made it to port, and with the shark he brought in an unusual 

 record for a boat whose orthodox fishing tackle consisted of a 9-thread 

 line and a light rod. Cass's record: the largest Whale shark ever caught 

 without the aid of gunfire, harpoons, or a platoon of helpers. 



Another skipper who tangled with a Whale shark of about the same 

 10-ton size was Captain J. B. Mathews of the Captain Bae Strickland. 

 Off St. Petersburg, Florida, Mathews sighted a Whale shark. After snar- 

 ing the shark by snagging a hook in its jaw, Mathews added a new 

 twist. He had double-spliced 500 feet of %-inch manila line into the 

 anchor cable of his 65-foot boat. He attached the line to the steel leader 

 on the hook in the shark's jaw. Then, using the anchor windlass as a 

 gigantic reel, he tried to play the shark. The shark would not play, 

 however. It headed off with the power of a locomotive, and towed 

 the Bae Strickland for 18 miles, and then, with one burst of energy, it 

 parted the line and kept going without looking back. 



Hooking into a Whale shark is not a guarantee of a thrilling ride or 

 several hours of a mighty tug-of-war. The Whale shark's inertia is often 

 as massive as its bulk. For some reason, however, stories of exciting 

 Whale shark encounters have a way of becoming more widely told than 

 the dull ones. 



Zane Grey, for instance, once hooked a Whale shark off the tip of 

 the peninsula of Lower California. He snagged its tail with a gaff hook. 

 Grey later vividly described how the Whale shark tried for 5 hours to 

 fight off capture, towing Grey's boat for miles. Finally, it plunged into 

 the depths, running off some 1,600 feet of line before it tore out the 

 hook. During the chase, or rather, the tow, harpoons were hurled at the 

 shark. Grey said they bounded off the shark's thick hide or bent under 

 the pressure exerted by harpooners trying to thrust them into the shark. 



Writing about effortless captures of Whale sharks and their "entirely 

 inoffensive . . . sluggish" habits, E. W. Gudger, the outstanding au- 



