b'June 10, 1975: The Day the War on Sharks BeganAbove/Left: Quint from Jaws, the original movie shark hunter; Above/Right: Capt. Frank Mundus (R) was the real life inspiration for Quint, Except I didnt get eaten by the shark! Below: Quint getting eaten by the shark, at the end of Jaws.over 13 feet deep, less than ten yards off the beach. This means that big fishveryon the front of the truck. On the return trip from a two-day outing, which started big fishare being fed upon by even bigger fish, closer to shore than almost any- and ended with slow and brutal rides down an otherwise untouched 50 miles of where on earth. beach, space was made for prey to be prominently displayed from the trucks open Nary a locale in the United States could have been more ripe for the boom intailgate. There was nothing cooler than sitting at a stoplight on the island being near-shore shark hunting than the Coastal Bend of Texas in the post-Jaws era. Westared in the face by a bloody, 10-foot Tiger Sharkat least when youre ten.had the biggest sharks feeding close to shore, along with the right kind of TexasMore anglers joined the shark hunting scene at PINS every year, almost entirely dudes with the biggest 4X4 trucksthe only way to access PINSenergized by aduring the spring and fall months when feeder fish are migrating most along the hunters mentality and the grit to dive into the deepest wilderness in pursuit of thecoastline, and when civilian visitors to the national seashore are fewer than during biggest prey. Add the demonization of sharks as merciless man-eaters that startedthe summer season. Competition among anglers naturally evolved, which started with Jaws, and these coastal shark hunters were motivated in a way that was muchwith the size and sophistication of the rigs on the outgoing trip, south down Padre different than going after a 10-point Whitetail buck that ends in a festive backstrapIsland, and was always settled on the return trip Sunday afternoon by the size and frythis shit was personal. scariness of the sharks being hauled home. For the record, shark in general is a Legendary and pioneering Flour Bluff shark surf fishermen like Davey Wright setlousy game fish that is difficult to handle, hard to cook, and is usually rubbery and the standard thats been followed for decades by thousands of anglers from acrosstastes like crap. Its not like bringing home a stringer of reds or drum that make a the country, and it started with the rig. As this writer recalls from being taken sharktasty fish fry on a Sunday afternoon.fishing at Big Shell by Wright as a high school Oceanography student in 1986, theThe most popular use of shark as a culinary item, worldwide, is for shark fin soup, truck was a jacked-up, dark blue Ford F-250, custom outfitted with a high, alumi- a delicacy in the Far East and south of the equator. It is for this wasteful purpose, num fishing tower, built-in ice chests and tackle boxes, and racks for kayaks thatas the name of the dish implies, that we began to see online images of sharks being are used to swim the heavy bait and tackle into deep waters. Massive rods and reels,brutally de-finned and then kicked over the side of the boat to be eaten by other some costing over a $1,000 eachback in those daysrode in holders mountedsharks. As the culture of conservation emerged in America during the 1990s, a TheCoastalBend.com THECOASTALBENDMAGAZINE99'