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Southbound Sportfishing Key West Report -tiger sharks
Capt. Richard Houde
September 19, 2010
Key West - Saltwater Fishing Report
Last week we got a report of a whale carcass floating off shore of Key West with a large number of Tiger sharks feeding on it. This is a rare sight to behold. Many people may have seen sights like this on TV nature shows, but I've been fishing the waters around Key West for over 25 yrs and I'd never seen is. I called my girlfriend to leave work early, grabbed a couple of friends/former mates that were on the dock and headed offshore. Fortunately the whale wasn't far out. It was floating in about 500 ft of water due south of Key West. There was already a small private boat there owned by a friend of mine, so finding it wasn't any problem, (It's a big ocean and even something as big as a 30ft whale can be very difficult). As we pulled close our jaws dropped in unison at the amazing sight before us. There was a 30ft sperm whale carcass with at least a dozen tiger sharks swimming around it and taking turns feeding. Tiger sharks can get very, very large, and none of these were any bigger than about 500-600lbs, but that ain't small. Tiger sharks are not common here. I've seen 4 in my 25 yrs of fishing and had only caught 1 previously. The other boat had stuck a gaff in the carcass and tied off to it so they could shut their engines off so we just tied off to them and just sat there in awe as we watched shark after shark calmly circle and then occasionally swim up and take a bite from the whale. We were so amazed, we didn't even try to catch on for the first hour and a half. We too busy taking turns pointing and yelling, " look at the size of that one!" as each big shark circled around. When we did finally decide to bait up a hook it didn't take more than a minute before one of the tigers went for it. We ended up catching 2 tigers, biggest one was only about 200lbs but we got to see on of natures spectacles first hand. Call it beautiful, call it horrific and gory but it was mother nature taking care of business as she always does!
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