first person shark sightings...

anybody here seen a shark big enough to be scary?

only one I seen in 12 years of surfing an average of maybe once a week
year round was @ moss landing.

about 8 feet long.  fat.  tracked a surfer riding a wave. shark
was inside the wave, riding it from inside.

I was paddling out. After I saw it, I paddled in.  

after a second or two of tracking the surfer, it dropped down and out
of sight.  shark appeared from below and dropped back real quick.
surfer never even knew... everybody kept surfing. I went home.

I've seen a lot of dolphins, even had some big ones blow out the back
of waves and scare me big time. wasn't a dolphin!

have fun out there...

after a second or two of tracking the surfer, it dropped down and out
of sight. shark appeared from below and dropped back real quick.
surfer never even knew... everybody kept surfing. I went home

.

Did you warn any of the surfers at this point - before you got out of the water?

the waves were really good that day. it was a sunny fall day with light
east winds. Unless a huge fin appeared, nobody was going to bail,
because some guy said he saw a shark. So I told a couple guys in
the parking lot, that was it.

It was enough to unnerve me tho. A lot of effortless speed and power
in that fish. It didn't give the appearance of being lazy. No doubt it
was not a great white, but the little yearling @ monterey aquarium had
a similar high energy vibe.

I've heard of windsurfers seeing sharks at waddell. I figure it's just a
matter of time before somebody here has a sighting, if it hasn't already
happened.

I know a kayaker who saw a great white at Linda Mar a few summers ago...I think they're out there all the time. It's just that when we see them we freak out.

About 20 years ago, a friend and I were paddling longboards back to the beach at Linda Mar.  We each had a decent striper tied off to the leashs, trailing behind us.  After a while I realzed my friend was no longer beside me.  I looked back to find him still paddling, but unaware that a blue shark was chomping on his fish, holding him still in the water.  The shark didn't do anything to us, but my buddy only got the head of his fish back.

I got bumped by what I believe was a bull shark while surfing in Texas, I am pretty sure it was not attacking me but basically ran into me. I would guess it was in the 6'-7' range. I kept surfing ( I was 14 and thus invincable!)

just a couple of months ago, I was paddling out of Moss Landing with Bill one early morning (before sunrise) heading out for Salmon...and I remember that we were not even out of the harbor when something hit my kayak really hard - almost causing me to flip     ....just as I was ready to yell GREAT WHITE SHARK   !!! I noticed that my fish finder was only reading a 3 foot depth   ....then I saw a seal's head pop up right next to me with his eyes glowing from the light of my head lamp....and it gave me the "F-YOU" look   ....apparently I spooked him and he rammed his head directly to my kayak's hull.......it's not a shark story but it sure felt like one  

I was about 20 yards away from a 6' mako in La Jolla last year.

Pretty cool.

MolBasser

Last year I was out on my buddies boat. We were about 15 miles North of Fort Bragg. We stopped to do some bottom fishing. When I looked around, I noticed a very large dorsal fin about 30 feet away from us. It turned, swam within 10 feet of the boat, and dissapeared. It was a great white about 16 feet long. Big fish. I was very glad I was in a boat!!

We never did catch a darn thing in that area.

LS

Many years mostly inside of Monterey Bay and other spots out of HMB with a few trips to Bodega and Bragg.

Never seen a GW and hoping to keep it that way!

Stuart

It was few years back. But whenI got back home from Alaska I took my floot tube out in monterey bay, just outside the coast guard pier, fishing for anything that would bite my bait. I caught a few rock fish and had them on a live stringger.
There was a sailboat race going on so there was a lot of boats zooming by me. Once they were all past me and a distance away I started to continue fishing...a little while latter another boat aprouched me, this time it was the harber master. He said to me "Oh! I saw somthing floating out here and its just you! " He recognized me from fishing off the worf. Anyways he wished me luck and went on his way. Leaving me all alone bobbing in my float tube.
Quiet and with an overcass, a small group of Sealions porpoise just a head of me and thats when I seen it ??? A shark finn cutting through the water right where I seen the seals just seconds before. At first I thought it was just another seal, but seals don't have dorsal fins or a  tail that trails it. At this point all i could do, or think  is getting my fishstringer out of the water and start paddlimg back to shore as fast as i can. I'm thinking i'm fish food!!! Then the fins went  under and never seen it again. I've never was able to identify what kind of shark it was but seven gill sharks are common in the area.
Needles to say i havent taken my foat tube out in the ocean again. Amatter of fact. Its for sale. Anybody want to buy a float tube

The shark north of Fort Bragg might have been the same one that bit that ab divers head off last year.  That attack happened in the same area.  We spot them sometimes at Chadburn Gulch (blues beach), just below Westport.  Sure clears out the lineup.  Another diver got bit there about 10 years ago, but he made it.  Lots of stiches, though.

Sorry for all the missed spelled words.

Two years ago my buddy and I were fishing out of Muir Beach on our yaks when a resident paddles up and says he's headed south to Pirates Cove to check out a whale carcass that floated up. My buddy says to let us know when you get back.

Twenty minutes later the guy is paddling towards us. My partner says what's up? The guy says he didn't make to Pirates Cove because as he approached he started seeing fins moving through the water.  Sharks love whale meat!

While we are on the subject of GW and shark sitings.  I was fishing off the pacifica Pier about 15 years ago when I noticed everyone gathered around the end of the pier.  I went to go check it out and low and behold a GW  about 15 or so feet long was cruising back and forth in a 50 yard radius.  What was the most amazing thing about fish was it was about 5ft wide and looked like a submarine.  It was a sureal experience that I think about everytime I kayak in the ocean.

I Just finished reading a book about the farallon Islands and I can say that I am more nervous fishing the reefs for rockfish than trolling or mooching for salmon.  The GW's like the surfline and the rocky points because they wait for the sea lions to enter the water!  Pedro definitley makes me nerous.

Jason