FROM ALASKA - A NEW IGFA RECORD

 

Nancy Konop

                                    

It was an overcast day on Monday, August 4, 2008, with an intermittent light rain in a remote area of Prince William Sound. The vessel, Miss Brizz, was many miles from the nearest port and there was not another vessel in sight. On the surface of these pristine waters, everything seemed quite calm and serene. Below the surface, however, it was a different story.

The anglers on board had been fishing hard since approximately 1:00 PM, and after more than 4 hours they had experienced 4 good take downs, 2 sharks on, and 1 shark had been brought to the boat and released. It was Mike Poling’s turn in the rotation.

“Suddenly, the reel started clicking at a good pace, and I knew a shark had taken the bait.” stated owner Tom Konop.
 

Poling grabbed the rod, set the butt into his fighting belt, and clipped the reel into his fighting vest. After letting the shark run with the bait for a while, Poling counted to himself, “1,2,3,” before he jammed the drag forward and jerked back hard and fast on his rod. The hook was set deep into the shark’s mouth. FISH ON!

“The reel just started screaming and the shark took off. The rod was bent over and I was just trying to hang on!” emphasized angler Mike Poling.

“THIS is salmon shark fishing with Alaska Wilderness Voyages,” stated Captain Michael Dunn on board the vessel Miss Brizz, a 62 foot long, 19 foot beam yacht charter operating in Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords, Alaska.

According to Captain Dunn, the vessel was sitting in approximately 500 feet of water, and for Poling, it sure seemed like the shark had taken all that and more off the reel. While Poling played the shark back and forth, his buddies continued to “cheer him on” with comments like “quit your moaning,” “put your back into it,” and “I better get a sleeping bag - looks like we are going to be here all night!”

“About 30 minutes into the fight, everyone started to question if the drag was set hard enough;” stated Konop, “but I assured them that the drag was set as hard as we could set it. Any harder and something would break!” Hearing this seemed to boost Poling’s determination, and he really dug in. After 45 minutes everyone felt that they were soon going to see the leader. Everyone, including the angler, was feeling pretty good.

“Then all of a sudden, the reel started screaming again, and it did not slow down for what seemed like forever!” exclaimed Poling. Everyone on board found themselves somewhat dumbfounded that the shark still had all that power left. Captain Dunn then smiled at Poling and said, “Don’t worry Mike, he can’t run that far. We are only in 600 feet of water!” Everyone on board the vessel was laughing. They knew that the shark was not going to stop until it had reached the bottom.

At that point, Konop knew that this shark was big and he told Poling that he had to tough it out - there was no way he was going to hand the rod off to another angler! A couple of years ago, one of Konop’s clients landed a world record shark, but the rod broke and therefore the catch was disqualified.

“At this point, all I could do was set my mind to the task of bringing the shark up again. So I painstakingly worked that shark up and down until I finally got him to the surface again.” stated Poling.

All ready with his leather gloves on, Konop grabbed the leader and everyone on board could finally see the length of the shark (92 inches!) and its enormous girth (59 inches!). “We tail wrapped the shark and lifted it out of the water with a crane aboard Miss Brizz.” stated Captain Dunn. “408 pounds! Poling’s shark had broken the IGFA World Record by quite a margin!”

There was still a problem, though, for these anglers. The IGFA requires that the shark be weighed on land. At that point it was after 8 PM and if they traveled to the nearest port to weigh the shark, they would probably not arrive for hours - well after midnight.

It was time to put some Alaskan Wilderness ingenuity to work. “We scouted a cliff with some trees hanging over it,” stated Konop. Then Captain Dunn, who is a retired Captain with the Anchorage Fire Department Heavy Rescue Squad, headed up the cliff and then up a tree with rope, carabiners, a come-along and another crew member. An hour later Poling found himself in a small, inflatable blue dinghy, floating under a 405 pound shark (the 3 pound difference due to loss of blood) hanging from a scale, which was hanging from a tree, that was perched over a cliff, with Captain Dunn laughing 40 feet or more overhead in the tree.

“Oh yeah,” adds Poling, “the best part is that there is blood dripping from the hanging shark into the remote, waters of Prince William Sound and there I was, floating around in a little blue dinghy. All I could think about was if the shark had some other friends hanging around - just waiting for a snack!”

Thankfully for Mike Poling and friends, as well as for the captain and crew from Alaska Wilderness Voyages, that remote area of Prince William Sound Alaska remained quiet for the rest of the evening; except of course, for the anglers celebrating the new IGFA World Record and their trip of a lifetime!