Went down to our spot for a quick bait sesh with a mate last night since it was fairly still n flat. Picked up a few herring quickly and my mate sent out a big one as live bait incase there were some decent tailor cruising around.

15 mins later the biggest hookup I have ever seen happened. Luckily it was on his shark rod running 80lb braid on a saragosa 18000, took all of about 1.3 secs to realise this was no tailor but a monster shark. Line peeled off the reel for about 100m with massive headshakes though a little slower than normal. He gained about 20 metres back before the second run started. The fight went on for about half an hour before my mate finally started winning the battle. After gaining back a heap of line we could see the outline of a 2m plus shark about 35 metres out. This was one FAT shark and made the bronzies we have landed look like bait...

Just as i was psyching myself up to wrangle this monster in the shallows (since it wasnt on a shark rig and only had about 60cm of steel trace with no heavy leader above that, so nothing to grab and leader it to shore) the next run happened. Maybe the shark had seen us standing there waiting for him or maybe he was just teasing us the whole time but he took off for rotto at break neck speed and sure enough the tail hit the braid and ping GONE!

Of all the time we spend down there chasing sharks and the one time we were not expecting it (or rigged up for it) this happens, we were devestated!! and im pretty sure the other guys down there fishing for herring were a bit pissed as well cuz the herring had been well and truly scared off lol

since the herring had left we threw out a couple more big baits with nothing but an eagle ray to show for it, though i was happy to get a bit of action fighting the ray.

i dont think my mate is gonna get over loosing that fish for a VERY long time... but i guess he was lucky to get it as close as he did given the rig used