It’s Not Your Typical Game of Tag

In the dead of night on a wind-swept sea, with the lights of civilization flickering in the distance, Keith Poe found himself engaged in a muscle-wrenching battle with a ferocious shark.

It made a sizzling run immediately after the hookup, taking 200 yards of line. Michael Toorop was holding the rod at the time, but he was new at this game and didn’t know the boat well enough to go racing around the deck in the dark, so he handed the rod to Poe, who was taken to the bow and back time and again before finally gaining the upper hand.

After an hour or so, he had the shark alongside the boat. It was a keeper, a “sacrificial lamb,” Poe would say later.

But it was still one mean mako, a 9-footer weighing 400 pounds, with eyes as black as the ocean and a mouth bristling with knife-like teeth.

Poe thought about using his baseball bat, but a shark this large would be difficult to subdue in this manner and he didn’t have the heart to bash its head in.

So he pulled out a 9-millimeter pistol and pumped 19 rounds into the mako’s brain.

“That made it quick and clean,” he said. “It never moved after that. We all just sat there letting that thing bleed. It looked like the Red Sea.”

So ended a night of shark fishing 14 miles off the South Bay coast, where one mako was landed and an estimated 1,000-pounder was lost.

You might have seen Poe’s battle on the local news. Chuck Myers, producer of the fledgling “West Coast Sportfishing” and Poe’s partner, captured the event on videotape, portions of which he sold to the networks.

You might also have wondered what drives a person to spend his nights on a tossing sea, trying to get his hooks into a creature that is minding its own business. Or why that person would feel compelled to kill such an animal.

Poe, 36, Redondo Beach, has heard the criticism--check out the message board of the Web site www.sharkin.com--for removing this magnificent mako from its world, and when people read that he did so with a blast from an automatic weapon, he’ll probably hear a lot more.

But he’s unfazed, saying, “I guess it’s these people we want to reach anyway,” adding that the shark he and his friends hauled aboard their 24-foot boat last Friday night was not targeted purely for sport or killed merely for its filets.

“It was a gift for science,” he said.

Poe, it turns out, is no ordinary shark fisherman. He’s one of about 100 volunteers involved with the Department of Fish and Game’s Shark Tagging Program.

And without people like Poe, who with his wife Deana are among the top taggers, there wouldn’t be much of a program.

“Of the 1,000 or so sharks I’ve caught [in the past three years], I’ve only kept four,” Poe said, adding that the rest have been tagged and released. “And all four have been over 100 pounds and over six feet. And all have been males.”

And all four, after the meat has been removed, have been donated to John Ugoretz, a DFG biologist in charge of the tagging program, who says large mako specimens are few and far between and that studying the organs and the backbone, or vertebrae, can be useful in determining such things as age and growth patterns.

“There are about 50 people who are really active in our program, and it’s real important because they’re doing the work that we don’t have the time or the money to do in the field,” Ugoretz said. “They’re using their free time to tag sharks so we can eventually get the information to better determine things like population and migration patterns.”

What has been learned already is that Southern California waters are a nursery for makos and blues, that the large sharks come in fairly close to shore to pup, then travel back to deeper water.

Of 13 tagged makos recaptured in 1997, Ugoretz said, all but two were caught within 50 miles of where they were tagged. One had traveled 106 miles from the Los Angeles area to Point Loma in about two months. Another traveled at least 300 miles, having been tagged locally in June 1996 and recaptured 488 days later, last October, off Monterey.

A blue shark Poe tagged last June off Redondo Beach was recaptured 31 days later near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Scientists hope to eventually be able to use such data to better manage shark fisheries that are getting more attention from the angling public.

The mako shark--and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent the thresher--is the most highly prized, both for its fight and its flesh.

Poe’s fish, which topped out at 402 pounds, would have easily broken the state-record 298-pounder caught in 1970, had the rod not been passed off and had Poe not used a gun to kill it--both are means for disqualification.

Yet it was much smaller than the largest mako landed on rod and reel off California--a 740-pounder caught, and shot, in July 1996 by Barry Andersen of Redondo Beach.

The all-tackle world record is a 1,115-pounder boated in 1988 off Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

Poe says Toorop might have had a shot at that, had he not forgotten to secure the swivel attached to the leader before casting his bait. The shark took the two-pound mackerel, but won its freedom almost immediately thereafter.

“Then it made a drive-by and it looked to be about 15 feet,” Poe said. “It was well in excess of 1,000 pounds.”

And it was probably looking for a sacrificial lamb of its own.

HOT BITES

Local: Persistent westerly winds have caused the first dramatic drop in water temperature this year--it was as low as 54 degrees on Thursday. It also put a halt to the yellowtail bite outside L.A. Harbor. The best bite is off San Diego, where limits are the rule and passenger loads light. The Legend went out of Seaforth Sportfishing with only seven anglers on Wednesday. . . . Of note: Long Beach Sportfishing will become Pierpoint Landing in mid-May and will move to 200 Aquarium Rd., which for fishermen will mean better parking and only a five-minute boat ride to the breakwater instead of 45 minutes.

Central California: A drop in water temperature is doing wonders for the salmon bite off Morro Bay. Limits of kings averaging 8-16 pounds are becoming more common. Woodland Hills angler Carl Griffith caught a 15-pounder aboard Lot A Fun out of Virg’s Landing in Morro Bay.

Cabo San Lucas: Chris Walsh, a wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings, made a nice catch: his first marlin, a fair-sized striper he released while light-tackle fishing with Baja Anglers. The striper bite has picked up, with boats returning to port flying between one and four marlin flags. Top catch, however, was a 550-pound blue landed by Dan Linz of San Marino after a two-hour fight aboard a Solmar cruiser.

Mazatlan: Sailfish are abundant, but they’re not interested in anything with a hook in it. Tuna to 75 pounds remain the predominant catch, according to the Aries Fleet.

Zihuatanejo: Sailfish activity is finally picking up. And periodic catches of giant yellowfin tuna (to 240 pounds, 25-40 miles offshore) and blue marlin are making things interesting, according to Ixtapa Sportfishing Charters.

JUST FOR THE HALIBUT

* He gained national fame in the 1980s as the man who shot J.R. Ewing on the popular TV series “Dallas.” But Hunter Von Leer will be just another Joe, one of about 1,000, competing for trips to Alaska and Baja California--and raising money for charity--in this weekend’s Santa Monica Bay Halibut Derby. Entries will be accepted today from 9 a.m.-7 p.m. at 2117 Ashland St., Santa Monica. Cost is $50 per person. Details: (310) 450-5131. . . . Top halibut in the recent Marina del Rey Halibut Derby was a 31-pounder caught by Dan Coe of Woodland Hills.