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Yani, thank you for the awesome day and awesome video. Those last couple of backflips by that Mako are vividly etched in my mind forever. That was the second of two very close encounters with that mako that day.

It was a slow day making bait and even slower going after yellow so we went deep and caught some nice large reds and a tasty whitefish. I was staying at the La Jolla Shores Hotel on a family vacation so I decided to gut the fish on the water. I guess I chummed the water for shark. Before long, I saw a small splash at my kayak near my game clip which was hanging in the water. I asked Yani if his fly lining mac was over by my yak and he said no. I picked up the game clip out of the ocean to find the whitefish had been sliced in half. I looked around and then I saw it, a 5 to 6 foot mako shark eyeing me with his black death eyes and began to circle around and around my kayak like you see in the movies. It was an awesome experience.

I thought the shark got bored and left, but he was tracking me ......


So after a long day on the water we decided to start back in. I always fly line a greenie as I am going back in. I had no bait left as making bait was extremely hard that day so I took out a rapala that I have never used that was siting in my tackle box for couple of years. Almost instantly the Mako hit it and did about 4 or 5 very high backflips which was crazy cool to see. This shark was on good and I was able to bring him to my kayak. I kept goading Yani into letting my gaff it and he kept telling my that he thought it was a bad and very dangerous idea. This went on for like 10 minutes as I was trying to talk him into it and he was trying to talk me out of it. I was cracking up the whole time and couldn't stop laughing as the whole experience was so cool. Finally clearer heads prevailed and I listened to my very wise friend, brought the shark in close, reached out and cut the line.