A bull shark caught off the Alabama coast in early May would have smashed the state record had it not been caught on commercial gear. A photo of the shark hanging next to Capt. David Stiller, the fisherman who caught it, is so astounding that it almost seems fake. But the shark was real, alright, according to Lew Childre, who along with Capt. Stiller runs Apex Monster Shark Charters.
Stiller was out on the water and unavailable for comment Tuesday. Childre wasn’t there when he caught the huge bull shark, but he talks with Stiller daily and got the details from him.
The Alabama charter captain comes from a family of commercial shark fishermen, Childre says, and he’s earned a reputation for landing giant bulls in recent years. Last summer, Stiller and three others caught the new state-record bull shark aboard Stiller’s boat while competing in a fishing tournament. Their shark weighed 494.5 pounds and put up an intense fight that lasted more than two hours, but Childre says the bull shark that Stiller caught on May 2 was even bigger. They estimated its length around 10 feet or more.
“I know that size-wise, she was easily 50 or 80 pounds heavier than that [record] shark,” Childre tells Outdoor Life. “We didn’t actually put a scale on this thing, but I know what our hydraulic [lift] can pick up … and this shark was slipping the belts and squealing the hydraulics just to get her into the boat.”
Although it would easily replace the standing state record, the giant bull shark is not eligible for record consideration because it was caught on commercial gear and not a rod-and-reel. Alabama’s rules for record certification fall in line with IGFA regs, which require record fish to be landed on a conventional — i.e. a non-powered — reel and brought in by a single angler.
Childre explains that Stiller was out fishing for bull sharks under a commercial harvest permit on May 2. He says their usual program involves running modified longlines with multiple baited hooks, which are attached to buoys on the surface. The buoys are trackable, so they can see when a shark gets hooked, and they’ll run over to unclip the line from the buoy and battle the shark. It’s like a high-adrenaline version of jug fishing for catfish, only with heavier lines and apex ocean predators.
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“They knew there was a big shark around — you can normally tell when a big bull is in the area because it’s just chewing up everything, and this one was chewing on the little sharks. So, they turned around and deployed a couple buoy sets with big rays on them, and that’s how they hooked her.”
After getting their hands on the line, Stiller and his crew hooked it up to a net roller and hauled the huge shark in. The shark was a pregnant female that Stiller also had a research permit for, so they took samples for a lab before processing it.
“We’ve caught a lot bigger. I mean, we’ve had some that come up and you’re like, Oh, dear God,” says Childre, who explains that smaller sharks are more marketable. “Normally we don’t want those fish because it’s just not worth the work [to bring them in] … but, in this case, we had the permits, and we had the request [from a lab] for a huge, mature female. So, it worked out perfectly.”
In hindsight, he says the catch would have been even better if it happened during a charter trip, just so a paying angler could have the experience. The two started Apex Charters about a year ago for that reason — and to make up for lost income on the commercial side as new regulations aimed at protecting sharks have made it harder for commercial shark fishermen to make an income, Childre says.
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The outfitter bills itself as “the only commercial shark fishing experience on the Alabama coast,” and Childre says they use the same kind of buoys and modified longlines to put their clients on huge bulls, along with sandbars and other big sharks. Only instead of hooking the longline to a roller, they can wind it right onto a conventional reel. Capt. Stiller runs the trips on a rebuilt Crusader that’s docked in Fort Morgan.
“The problem with sharks is that they’re not usually on a reef, right? So, most of the time, you’ll just chum for hours until everyone is totally bored, or you’ll sit there on a drift in the chop getting sick as a dog … but [our operation] allows people to experience the commercial side of it,” Childre says. “People love it because it’s very interactive.”
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