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Then there is the mako, probably the flashiest fighting fish in the sea. A snaggle-toothed bruiser (record: 1,000 Ibs.) that roams far offshore in both the Atlantic and Pacific, the mako can swim at 40 m.p.h., bite clean through a 500-Ib.-test wire leader, leap 20 ft. out of the waterhigher than any marlin. Enraged by the hook, makos have been known to yank luckless fishermen overboard or jump straight into a boat, tear the place apart, then leap back into the water to fight for another two hours. Their killer instinct lingers even after death. At Ocean City, Md., not long ago, a tourist walked past the corpse of a mako lying on the dock, carelessly brushing its head with his foot. Ka-chung! With a sudden muscle spasm, the dead mako sank its fangs into the passerby's leg.
Turning the Tables. The granddaddy of all sporting sharks is the great white shark, the world's biggest and most dangerous game fishusually known simply as "the man-eater." A true monster that grows to 35 ft. and possibly 8,000 Ibs., the white shark has devoured swimmers in such diverse locations as Matawan, N.J., the Gulf of Mexico, and Portsea, Australia. The rod-and-reel record is a 2,664-pounder landed by Australian Fruit Farmer Alf Dean in 1959. That was just a baby. Dean himself hooked into a bigger one that towed his 30-ft. launch 12 miles, finally broke loose after an epic 5½-hr. battle. Last year, off New York's Montauk Point, Captain Frank Mundus, a charter-boat skipper and shark specialist, confronted a huge white shark that swam up to inspect the boat and rose so far out of the water that Mundus swears he could have reached right out and touched the gaping mouth. Mundus hit it with three harpoons in the next five hours before finally bringing the great fish to gaff. Length: 17 ft. 6 in. Weight: 4,500 Ibs.
Mundus also has a 3,500-lb. white to his credit (again harpooned), plus a hand in 15 rod-and-reel records that range from a 66-lb. porbeagle caught on 12-lb.-test line to a 683-lb. 12-oz. mako caught on 50-lb. test. To catch a shark, he says, first catch a whale:
nothing draws sharks like a chum of blackfish, whale bits and blood. And for all those fishermen who think that sharks are good for nothing, he has one further word of advice: turn the tables on that shark. Eat it. Blue shark, he says, tastes "just like striped bass." And the mako and porbeagle are every bit as good as swordfish. In fact, smiles Mundus wisely, many a housewife has bought shark in her friendly neighborhood fish market at $1.60 a poundas swordfish.
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