Craig Winters, 53, of Albany, Texas, and friend Brian Cope were fishing aboard a 37-foot charter boat out of Mako Matt's Marine in Huntington Beach, California on August 31. While chumming for sharks off South Orange County, they caught a few small blue sharks and chummed in great white then a giant mako grabbed Winters’ bait.
Subdued after a four-hour battle, the mako was too large to bring aboard so it was towed back to port where it tipped the scales at 917 pounds.
While far larger than the 200- to 400-pound average size mako caught off southern Cal, Winters’ fish falls short of the current California State Record, a 1,098-pound, 12-ounce shortfin mako caught by Sean Gizatullin at Anacapa Island, Ventura County, in 2010. The World Record is a 1,221-pounder caught off Chatham , Massachusetts in 2001.
