WHEN WILSON MET JAWS
In 2007, John Wilson met with ‘The Godfather of Great Whites’... Frank Mundus. Here’s his story...
THERE can be few Britons who haven’t heard the story of the little town of Amity, police chief Brody, and Captain Quint.
Immortalised in the blockbuster Jaws, their battle with the great white shark frightened the hell out of us all when it was first screened more than three decades ago.
Much of Steven Spielberg’s footage was shot at Martha’s Vineyard, subsequently given the fictitious name of ‘Amity’.
But where it all ‘really’ happened was further down the US eastern seaboard off Montauk, just two hours’ drive from New York.
There, from the 1960s to the 1980s, ‘monster man’ Frank Mundus brought eight great white sharks weighing between 2,000lb and 4,500lb into the dock – more than anyone else before or since.
And it was Frank who inspired the character Quint, played by the late Robert Shaw in Jaws.
Sadly and inexplicably he wasn’t recognised by the author, the late Peter Benchley, who chartered Frank’s boat to research the film. In fact the boat was copied for the film, but while Quint’s boat was eaten by the shark, Frank’s ‘Cricket II’ is now over 60 years old, still seaworthy, and berthed at Montauk marina.
Just recently, while competing in the fifth Brits V Yanks catch-andrelease tournament, it was my privilege to meet up once again with the ‘monster man’ himself, Captain Frank Mundus, now into his eighties, and without doubt the ‘Godfather’ of shark fishing.
Pre-Mundus, sharks were sadly classed as ‘trash’ fish in the USA, where to this day, believe it or not, common carp are still shot in bow and arrow competitions. That’s a mentality problem that has so much trouble crossing the pond.
It defies any kind of logic. As they say, ‘only in America’.
Frank, however, has a great sense of accountability, and realises that while his escapades
with wreat whites could in no way be duplicated today, due to conservation pressure, we could do much more for the conservation of sharks.
Hence our catch-and-release tournament, the only one of its kind run off Montauk, and probably the only one in the USA.
Frank maintains that leaving an ordinary hook deep inside a shark, as many anglers do, results in its death. That’s why we use ‘circle’ hooks, designed originally for commercial long-lining.
Most sharks hooked using 8/0 or 10/0 ‘circles’ end up with the hook in the corner of the jaws, even when the bait has been deeply swallowed.
If the trace has to be cut (you can’t always risk life and limb carefully removing the hook from a thrashing fish while leaning over the gunnels of a heavily-rocking boat), the shark will shed the hook or it will ‘rust off.’
Every aspect of the fishing in the Brits v Yanks Shark Tournament was geared to conservation – but that didn’t stop the sharks from fighting as hard as ever...
The 30lb-class outfit lurched over in the rod holder as my sixth blue shark of the afternoon inhaled a large mackerel hookbait and set the multiplier screaming like a stuck pig.
With a circle hook there was no need to strike as yet another 150lb-plus blue powered away beneath the deep blue waves of the Western Atlantic from our boat ‘Masterpiece’, skippered by Mark Assogna, and I settled down to another exhilarating, armwrenching battle.
What hectic and marvellous sharking we were experiencing on this, our last day of the annual Tournament, hosted by Montauk Yacht Club at the tip of Long Island. One boat alone accounted for no fewer than 44 blue sharks.
Sadly, due to fishing solidly out from Montauk for five consecutive days, I didn’t meet up again with Frank until an hour before we caught the coach back from Montauk Yacht Club to JFK airport. But our hour-long chat, as usual, made my trip, as did the Tournament victory.
For four years out of five now, we Brits ‘kicked ass’, and once again beat the Yanks on their home turf by 34,500 points to 32,750.
Over the three-day event, getting on for 200 blues averaging over 100lb were caught, tagged and released – all on 30lb test gear.
Tournament veteran Mark Williamson, from Manchester, boated the heaviest blue estimated at around 400lb – not bad considering the British record is 230lb!
Why we never see these monsters on this side of the pond is rather baffling.
Incidentally, the world record for a blue shark stands at a massive 550lb, caught off Montauk from Art Cortes’s ‘Half Back’.
This is the boat on which I fished for striped bass and blue fish over the ‘rips’ of Montauk Lighthouse with Brits Mark Williamson and Paul Taylor the day before the tournament started.
This was an entirely different kind of fishing, trolling parachute jigs on a wire line at around two knots over the kelp-covered rocks in depths down to 45ft where the big stripers congregate.
And the strength-sapping technique of continually working the jig by slamming the rod-tip down every few seconds to simulate the action of a squid not only got our arms prepared for the sharking ahead, but produced double-figure blue fish and several chunky 20lb-plus striped bass.
The largest of these, close on 30lb, fell to Paul Taylor from Harlow, Essex.
It was the perfect start to a really special trip, and I can’t wait to get back out there again next year to defend the title and meet Frank again.
“Frank Mundus has a great sense of accountability and realises we could do much more for the conservation of sharks”