A local shark fisherman caught and tagged the first great white shark of the winter season along the coast of Beaufort on Sunday. Yes, Captain Chip Michalove of Outcast Sport Fishing and his crew are at it again.
Tis’ the season.
The first great white catch, tag and release of the winter 2019 season was a pretty big one, if you look at the above photo.
And, she also had quite the nice smile.
“Tagged the first great white shark of the season today,” Michalove said in a Facebook post on Sunday. “We were planning on going out a ways, but the seas were a little rough so we stayed inshore.”
Inshore.
This great white shark was caught…. inshore.
Michalove operates a charter fishing service out of Hilton Head Island and is well known for getting the big ones. Michalove tags great white sharks among other species that his charter customers catch. He does this for research and works with Dr. Greg Skomal, Recreational Fisheries Program Manager at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.
“Perfect hook set and perfect tag application,” Michalove said. “We passed on satellite tagging cause she’s a little too small and I don’t want to damage her dorsal fin, so we put a small acoustic tag on and popped the hook out.”
“She took off like a bullet and we called it a day”.
So nonchalant. So easy.
Yeah, don’t try this at home.
Shark master
He’s been called the shark whisperer. And, that’s kind of accurate.
Last January, Michalove caught the largest male great white ever tagged in the Atlantic Ocean.
If that wasn’t enough, a week later he caught seven great white sharks in one day.
No lie, he did.
With the first one caught, tagged and released on Sunday, it looks like it’s going to be a frenzy of a winter season coming up. We can’t wait.
Stay tuned.
And, get a bigger boat.
