Florida Anglers Catch and Release 12-Foot Shark in Rare Shore Fishing Encounter
Two shark fishing guides caught and released a massive great white shark from the shore at Navarre Beach, Florida, in an encounter captured on video that has drawn more than 1.2 million views on YouTube.
Blaine Kenny and Dylan Wier, owners of Coastal Worldwide shark fishing tours, hooked the estimated 1,200-pound, 12-foot great white from the sand at Navarre Beach on Santa Rosa Island, located between Pensacola and Destin.
After a fight lasting nearly an hour, they brought the shark close enough to unhook it and release it back into the Gulf.
The catch was no accident.
Kenny and Wier set up on the beach the evening before and waited through the night. Their bait was far from standard — Kenny used the head of an 80-pound yellowfin tuna, while Wier used the head of a 150-pound swordfish.
The bite came at 8 a.m. It was immediately clear Kenny had hooked something large. The fish headed east at a rapid pace, pulling with enough force that the pair considered chasing it down the beach.
“This is absolutely nuts dude, he’s screaming east,” Kenny said in video footage of the catch. “We might have to end up chasing him at some point.”
The nearly hour-long battle pushed Kenny to his limits. Reeling in a creature of that size from shore — without a boat — demands enormous strength and endurance, and the video makes that clear. Kenny was visibly tired by the end.
Throughout the fight, the pair were unsure exactly what species they had on the line. They knew it was extraordinary, but identifying it from shore proved difficult.
“It’s a big, big wintertime shark,” Wier said. “There’s only a few things it can be, a mako, a giant tiger, a white shark or the biggest dusky we’ve ever seen in our lives.”
To solve the mystery, Kenny and Wier launched a drone over the water for a bird’s-eye view. The aerial footage delivered the answer they had been hoping for.
“Look at that, that’s a white shark!” Wier says in the video. “That’s a monster, dude, that’s not just any white shark.”
Kenny eventually reeled the shark close enough to shore to unhook and release it. Up close, the sheer size of the animal was undeniable.
According to a Facebook post from Coastal Worldwide, it was estimated at more than 1,200 pounds and 12 feet long.
“This has been the day that Blaine has been dreaming about since he dropped his first bait,” Wier said.
Landing a shark of that size from the beach required highly specialized equipment, including 200-pound, 12-strand braid line, a shark fishing kayak-deployed leader, an HD shark sandspike, a shark fishing beach cart and a Thrasher Towtruck series rod.
The footage was shared on YouTube on Jan. 31, 2024, and has since topped 1.2 million views.
This was not even Coastal Worldwide’s first great white encounter. The company previously caught an 11-foot great white in March 2023 off Orange Beach, Alabama — roughly 10 months earlier.
That Alabama catch drew attention from scientists. Dr. Marcus Drymon of Mississippi State University described how rare it was in an interview with WALA.
“This is a very rare event and maybe, if those guys continue to fish from the beach for the next several years and never catch another one like it,” Drymon said, adding the species is uncommon in this part of the world and especially from the beach.
Yet Kenny and Wier managed to do it again — this time with an even larger shark, estimated at more than 1,200 pounds, caught from a Florida Gulf Coast beach during the winter months.
Both the Navarre Beach catch and the earlier Orange Beach catch ended with the sharks being released. Kenny unhooked the 12-foot great white and let it swim free, a moment captured in the viral video.
BOTTOM LINE: Two anglers have now landed great white sharks from Gulf Coast beaches twice in 10 months — catches scientists describe as extraordinarily rare — raising the profile of shore-based shark fishing and the debate over these encounters with one of the ocean’s apex predators.
Production of this article included the use of AI. It was reviewed and edited by a team of content specialists.
