Funny you should say that. One of the stewards caught a small one, about 3 feet long and brought it up to the top of the life netting on the fantail. One of the guys leaned over and gutted it. When it stopped moving the steward flipped it over the top on to the deck. It started flopping around and I was suddenly 20 feet a way at the after mount with 2 other guys. "where have you been shark fishing before?" One was form Long Island, One from up north of Boston and me, from when I had lived in Culver City Calif. when ten. We watched as others tried to kill the shark beating it with brooms. LOL It bit one guy's shoe at the end of the toe and when he jumped back he looked down and his toes were sticking out of his shoe. He had curled his toes up when it hit the shoe so he didn't loose any of his toes. He had to buy new shoes though. ; )

I didn't go take a close look at them(like in the water). They were all 6-8 feet long, Blues maybe, or small Makos. When we were tied up to a buoy 3 miles off key West did see an 18 foot Mako/Great White when it hit a piece of floating steak. He did hit the "Short Line" about 150 feet long and the bait pulled out of his mouth the UB cable held but the life line post bent a little from it. The Long UB cable line was wrapped around the Boat winch. LOL But he never hit that one. We had permission to shoot any that we caught that were to big to safely bring on board, per say. We didn't shot any though.

Next time you want to chum for sharks use a big bottle/jar of ketchup. I know it sounds weird, but when we had a DASH Helo crash of Flordia, when we went to retrieve it there were LOTS of Sharks there. The First Class Boats told the captain that he could move them all to the other side of the ship so they could lower the Skiff and go get the drone. "You will have to tell the cooks to give me what I want!" The Capt was thinking cases of steaks. He came back up with 4 1 gallon cans of Ketchup! He poked holes on both ends and threw them in one at a time on the off side. It defused just like blood in the water and the sharks came right to the cloud of Ketchup. When one hit the can and opened it up, they went into a feeding frenzy. He used 3 of them total for the boat going out and coming bank to the ship. If I hadn't seen it, I would not have believed it, but it worked great!