Report was written by a buddy of mine I fished with that day-
Went out Saturday evening for the first time this year. Got my buddy Matt his first shark a nice 7ft sand tiger. We were a little nervous about the new regulations in Delaware but we were checked by a park ranger and he mentioned nothing to us about the new regulations. He didn't see us catch the shark but it was pretty obvious that we were shark fishing we had 4 penn 50s out. We had probably the fastest release on this one i have ever done, and we were able to keep the shark right at the edge of the wash so every time a wave broke he was getting plenty of water across the gills. This bad boy was only out of the water for about a minute and a half. 2 quick pics and a removed hook later and he was swimming strong. Congrats to Matt on this shark, he's leaving this week for 3 months overseas with the Navy. Also had my buddy Jamie with me on his first trip he's a new member to the site and i'm sure he will add something to the report.
I know the picture makes the shark look high and dry, but if you look and see how wet the sand is by his mouth, you can see that each wave has been going past his head with water. I ran in as the water receded to take a picture real quick then ran back before the upcoming wave swept back up the beach.
That gives you an idea of how close we were in the water the entire time with the shark, we were about a foot closer to the water then the above picture, again, each wave that came up passed over the sharks head through his gills and almost past his entire 7ft body.
Total time once we had control of the shark was less then a minute and a half, hook removed, and the shark powered back through the waves with out any help whatsoever.
All in all, im new to the sport of landbasedsharkfishing, this was my first trip out and it was a success, its unfortunate that delaware is trying to come up with new laws to keep people from sharkfishing from the beach, but according to their laws, and how we landed/released the shark, it never came out of the water and was never high and dry, thus being successful and not breaking any laws.
