Why bother with a boat, cut bait, and chum when you can catch sharks from your balcony with a pork chop? Anglers in Australia’s “Gold Coast” region of southeast Queensland (central east coast of Australia) can bull shark fish from home along hundreds of miles of brackish canals. This quote from the UK Telegraph on shark fishing along the canals of Australia’s Gold Coast says it all: (more…)

The 2006 Destin Fishing Rodeo is well underway. Taking a look at the current standings, the charter fleet is mostly ahead of the private vessels in most categories. The largest fish so far is in the shark class at 339lbs. We hope to make it out to AJ’s soon to get some weigh-in pictures. If you’d like to make a report on the tournament, please use our Contact Form.

Mark Miller of Primofish.com was in enough to send a link to his photo gallery from Destin on September 16-17. In his own words,

I posted some pictures for my weekend in Destin Sept 16-17 while the Destin Shark Tournament was underway. There were a few pics of the 480 pound Tiger Shark caught by Cherie Mills, so I thought I might pass the web gallery on to you in case you are interested.

Visit Mark’s Gallery HERE.

He does have some good pictures of a few of the big sharks - as well as some nice underwater photography in the Destin Area. Thanks Mark!

Know of another great online fishing gallery or tournament report? Please send us the link via our contact form!

Cherie Mills took top honors in the Lady Angler category in the 2006 Destin Deep-Water Shark tournament, but it took more than landing a 480lb Tiger Shark to do it.

A challenge by second place finisher Virginia Lipscomb over allowable assistance by Mills’ crew invoked a rather interesting clause in the tournament rules - resolution via polygraph.

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From an e-mail forward at work today, we learned about a 6′ bull shark caught near Cinco Bayou Bridge, in Fort Walton Beach on the 10th of September. Least anyone have misconceptions, this is not uncommon. Bull sharks are the most common shark in our area - and also the type of shark most adapted to brackish and even fresh water. Bull sharks have been found as far north as St Loius, Missouri on the Mississippi river and caught quite often in the bay, bayous, and intercoastal waterway around Destin. We are not aware of any inshore human attacks in this area.


Quoting from the e-mail: (more…)

Business travel kept us out of town during this week’s Destin Deep Water Shark Tournament, but it seems most web coverage centered around the Human Society of the United States (HSUS) protest. Typical articles include those posted at Floridatoday.com and the Northwest Florida Daily News. Just to be clear, the HSUS aren’t the people who run your local pet shelter - they are what most would consider a radical organization who’s mission, if run to its logical conclusion, would put animal rights on the same plane as human rights. While sportsmen can have legitimate disagreements on how best to conduct “big game” fishing tournaments, they are conducted in accordance with state and federal regulations. Hopefully, improvements in fishing technology will allow us to conduct more tournaments as catch-and-release for big fish as is normally done in bass fishing.

If anyone has pictures or stories from the tournament they would like to share, please send us a note via our Contact Us form.

The 21st Annual Destin Deep Water Shark Tournament will be held this month from 13 - 17 September. A Captian’s meeting will be held on the 13th at 5:30pm. Weigh-ins will be conducted at the Destin Fishing Fleet Marina starting on the 14th. The awards diner is at 7pm on the 17th at Fisherman’s Wharf. The tournament is sponsored by the Destin History and Fishing Museum. Call 850.837.6611 for full tournament details.

CNN posted a 45 second video of a 819 lb Mako caught in California on its website this morning. The video shows the shark upon arrival at Marina Del Rey (just north of the LAX airport in Los Angeles).

You can see the video HERE. It appears to play best in Internet Explorer.

Found a great article on a recent Mako tournament at Marinernetwork.net. They hooked up a large Tiger shark during the 3-day event, and quite a few smaller fish.

An excerpt:”Unfortuantely for us (yet fortunate for the shark), the OC Shark Tournament is organized as a conservation tournament and Tiger sharks are off limits for weigh in. We were now fishing for release points. After having the bimini twist enter and subsequently exit the roller guides 30 or 40 times more times, we got the feeling we may have been fishing with light tackle and we definately “needed a bigger boat”. We finally got our release and our picture (with the angler, the boat number arm band, and the shark all in one frame - don’t asked me how we accomplished it). The fight took 2 hrs and 41 min and we estimated the fish at 15ft long and 800+lbs. “