Shark Apprehended, No Shots Are Fired

It launched out of the ocean “like a Polaris missile coming out of a submarine,” crashed down with a furious splash and proceeded to race around for nearly three hours until Bill Tittle’s muscles cramped and his legs nearly gave out.

“I was whipped,” he would recall more than a week later.

Back at the docks in Marina del Rey, under a night sky and before a growing crowd, the mako shark Tittle eventually whipped measured 10 1/2 feet with a 66 1/2-inch girth. It tipped the scale at an impressive 582 pounds.

Much bigger makos have been pulled from local waters, to be sure. A 740-pounder, believed to be the largest caught on rod and reel in California, was captured in 1996 by Barry Andersen of Redondo Beach. A 632-pounder was weighed in two months ago by Keith Lambert of Mar Vista.

But Tittle’s 582-pounder, caught only three miles off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, is perhaps more noteworthy because it was subdued without use of a gun and thus probably will be approved as a state record, striking from the books a 298-pounder caught off Anacapa Island in 1970.

Shooting these open-ocean predators is against the rules when it comes to record consideration, but many believe it to be the safest and most humane way to dispatch them, that is if one chooses to keep them in the first place.

Neither Tittle nor Hunter von Leer, owner and captain of the vessel on which the mako was caught, is among those who share this belief, although Von Leer is no stranger to shooting sharks--he once played the role of B.D. Calhoun and dueled with J.R. Ewing in the popular television series “Dallas.”

Von Leer prefers merely to use a flying gaff (with a detachable head tied to a main line), a series of ropes and lots of muscle (he weighs more than 200 pounds). And to put the shark out of its misery, he thrusts a knife into the stem of its brain. “That takes care of it as quickly as a bullet,” he explained. “And it’s legal.”

This is a man who enjoyed steady work as a stocky, blond character actor throughout the 1980s. These days, though, Von Leer, 54, is busier playing out large game fish than he is play-acting before a camera.

His role now is that of The Great White Hunter.

At least that’s the name of his boat, a 23-foot aluminum Bayrunner that even he said “looked a lot smaller” when the giant mako approached.

By Von Leer’s side, usually, are his fiancee, Fariba Zand, 36, of Malibu, and Tittle, 47, of Venice. Zand holds a line-class world record for Pacific halibut: a 222-pound barn door she cranked up on 16-pound-test last June at Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Tittle caught a 218-pounder on the same trip.

Von Leer put himself in the world-record book last year by catching a 43-pound California halibut on 50-pound test.

His specialty, though, is shark fishing. Notably for makos and, more notably, large makos.

And for those who believe no sharks should be taken from their hazy blue world, and cringe at the thought of somebody filling one full of lead or stabbing it in the brain, Von Leer points out that he kills them only during tournaments or for record consideration--or if he’s planning a barbecue because mako shark, he said, “tastes every bit as good as swordfish.”

This much is sure: Von Leer’s method is more selective than those used by most shark fishermen. There are no lines in the water when he sets up his chum slick with a steady stream of ground-up mackerel.

Instead, he waits and watches and picks out his intended target, thus leaving the less glamorous blue sharks and smaller makos unharmed.

If nothing else, this process makes great theater. The blues are usually the first to show, followed by small makos and, he hopes, larger makos. They aren’t shy and usually swim to the stern and chomp on the prop once or twice, perhaps thinking it to be the source of the alluring scent.

Gulls land on the water and squabble over bits of mackerel, occasionally falling prey to lunging sharks. Sea lions dart about nervously, and rightly so.

This was the scene nearly two weeks ago during a small tournament to raise funds for a local charity. Zand and Von Leer were on watch while Tittle napped at the bow. Three or four small makos and three large blues were cruising around. A large school of mackerel had taken to the chum as well.

Suddenly, everything scattered and Zand noticed “a silvery flash” shooting through the mackerel. “She said, ‘What was that, a whale?’ ” Von Leer said. “I only saw a glimpse of its tail, but I knew it was either a big mako or a small great white. This thing was a real sub.”

He cast a hunk of skipjack tuna, rousted Tittle from his nap, handed him the rod and got behind the wheel. The mako immediately took the bait, Von Leer hit the throttle and Tittle reared back to set the hook.

“The reel was just smoking,” Von Leer said. “The mako ran off about 75 yards in only a few seconds and then that fish just went airborne.”

Only then did Tittle realize what he had gotten himself into.

“It was tough,” he said afterward. “I could hardly lift my arms after that.”

BAD MEDICINE

Joe Denk is a fair shot with a spear gun. His favorite fishing hole is the Sea of Cortez, notably the prolific waters of Baja California’s East Cape, where he once took an 84-pound bull dorado.

But during his most recent trip to the area, where he owns a home, it was Denk whose skin was pierced by one of Baja’s predators, a land-based one at that.

Denk, 59, was nailed by a scorpion that fell from a thatched roof onto his bed while he was sleeping.

The creepy little arachnids are everywhere, he says, since being displaced by Hurricane Iris, which drenched the region a few weeks ago, washing all sorts of things out of the canyons and leaving in its wake beaches that are still strewn with wood and other debris.

Still, Denk thought little of the incident and went back to sleep. Baja’s scorpions are not considered particularly dangerous; their stings aren’t much more painful than those inflicted by bees.

But what the retired aerospace engineer from Manhattan Beach didn’t know was that a strange bacteria had entered his wound--either from an outside source or from the scorpion.

He woke up in a state of delirium, with a high fever and a right knee the size of a cantaloupe. A friend booked him on a morning flight to Los Angeles and he spent the next four days in a hospital bed, being fed antibiotics intravenously to kill the infection. A week later, he’s still under the watchful eye of his physician.

Still, the blue water hunter considers himself fortunate to be alive. He might not be had he not sought a second opinion.

“My friend brought me to a small clinic the night I got bit and all the young intern there gave me were a few aspirin and an allergy pill.”

CASTS AND BLASTS

* The First String out of L.A. Harbor Sportfishing on Wednesday turned in a fish count that looked as though it came from the pages of an August log: 160 yellowfin tuna for 28 anglers. Yes, tuna are back in force off the east end of San Clemente Island. Things were shaping up just as well for anglers aboard the Freedom on Thursday, until the Navy, which has a base on the island, came and kicked them out. “But the Freedom picked up 30 yellowfin in one quick stop and might have gone over 100 if they were left alone,” said 976-TUNA’s Philip Friedman, who reached the vessel via sideband radio.

* Notable catches: A 550-pound blue marlin by Barney Mow of Calabasas after a 2 1/2-hour fight aboard the Gaviota VII at Cabo San Lucas. His brother, Peter, followed that up with a 500-pounder the next day. . . . Taking advantage of the on-again-off-again albacore bite off Morro Bay, Steve Boyes of Bakersfield caught a 70-pounder aboard the Princess out of Virg’s Landing.

* Deer season is underway in the Southland’s D11 zone and hunters have had poor to fair success for mostly small bucks. Miguel Anguiano, 30, of Granada Hills, however, managed to shoot an impressive “4-by-4” that dressed out at about 170 pounds. He was hunting with friends in the Angeles National Forest. “It looked like something out of the movies,” he said. “. . . Like something you’d see in the Buckmaster series on TV.”

* Hunters have bought all 18,000 bear tags available for this season, which is underway until Dec. 27 or until 1,500 bears are killed. It’s the third consecutive sellout, the Department of Fish and Game says. As of Wednesday, 415 bears had been bagged. Last year, the 1,500-bear quota was reached Dec. 4.

* The Southern California duck-hunting opener was successful in most areas and Saturday’s quail and chukar openers promise to be just as successful. “Chukar are going to be especially good,” said Jim Matthews, publisher of Western Birds. “I’ve been out several times in the past two weeks . . . and found 75- to 100-bird coveys in several locations.”