‘Big Guy’ Weighs Nearly 3,500 Pounds : 2 Claim Record With ‘Monster’ Shark

Two veteran shark killers--one of them the flamboyant fisherman who inspired the novel “Jaws”--claimed a world rod-and-reel record today with a great white shark weighing nearly 3,500 pounds hauled in from the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island.

Frank Mundus of Montauk and fishing buddy Donald Braddock were trying for shark 35 miles southeast of Montauk Point from Mundus’ 42-foot boat Cricket II Wednesday when they hooked the great white on a 130-pound test line.

The two returned to Montauk Marine Basin with their prize in tow shortly after midnight today and hoisted it on the dock inside a heavy freight cargo sling.

About 3,000 spectators watched the mammoth 16 1/2-foot-long shark as it was weighed in at 3,450 pounds, said marina weighmaster Tommy Edwards.

“It’s a monster,” Edwards said, explaining that it had to be weighed in the net because it was too heavy to put on a tail hook.

The shark, which the fishermen dubbed “Big Guy,” beat the existing rod-and-reel record listed in the Guinness Book of World Records of a 2,664-pound great white caught off Australia in 1959.

Mundus, whose exploits fishing for shark inspired Peter Benchley’s novel “Jaws” and the subsequent movie, was holding the trolling line and Braddock the reel when the shark swallowed the hook Wednesday afternoon.

The two commercial fisherman had been out with charter groups when they first spotted the shark with a school of sharks feeding on a dead whale.

The charter groups were taken back in, and the two men returned to try to catch one of the great whites.