The afternoon of July 30, Connecticut anglers Ed Lovely (blue shirt) and Moe Giovanni hooked a heavy shark in Long Island Sound in about 40-foot depths.
“I was using a 30W Okuma reel spooled with 80-pound-test line, and I couldn’t do anything with that fish after it hit,” Lovely told Wired2fish, while taking a break from his drywall business. “I thought it was gonna spool me, because it just wham-slammed the bait, and zoom it took off fast and deep.”
The pair of anglers in their small fishing boat battled the beast for two hours before they finally saw the shark and how big it was.
“We were in awe of its size,” said Lovely. “Neither of us had ever seen a shark so huge.”
Day was turning to night, and still the anglers battled the thresher shark. At one point they considered cutting the line because night was at hand.
“Dealing with the awesome size fish would be difficult at night, but Moe said no way are we cutting the line,” Lovely added. “So, we dug out some head lamps and kept fighting the fish into the night. It was insane.”
The fish fight was so grueling that they shared time fighting it using a rod [holding] belt.
“The only way we could handle that fish was to fight it as a team,” said Lovely, age 46. “It was a lot of hours of back and forth with the rod and the fish still strong and running deep. One guy had to run the boat, the other fought the fish.”
After six hours of battling the shark it began to tire.
They then harpooned the massive shark, whose large tail is shaped like a long sickle. Then they lashed a line to the fish and towed it back to shore with their boat. At a dock they loaded the fish onto a trailer with the help of Lovely’s son, and finally left the waterfront at 1 a.m.
Lovely will be learning from state officials whether the big 700-pound thresher will be considered a state shark record. The current Connecticut shark record is a 650-pound mako caught in 1987. The state thresher shark record is a 467-pounder.
The world record IGFA thresher shark weighed 767 pounds, 3 ounces, caught in 1983 off New Zealand.
Lovey’s 700-pound thresher has been cleaned, filleted and shared with extended family and friends, as he waits to hear about whether or not his fish is considered a record for Connecticut.
“I’ve caught some big sharks, but nothing like this one,” Lovely said. “It was massive, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. I still can’t believe we did this, because I’m just a guy who likes to get out and fish for fun.
“If I’ve learned anything from this it’s that if I hook another giant shark of this size, I’m cutting the line.”
