Kayaker fishing for bass snags something much larger — and deadly, Canada video shows
The sun sparkled over the bay in eastern Canada as Rick Austin trawled along in his motorized fishing kayak. Watching his fishing line, he had no idea he was about to experience the “biggest adrenaline rush” of his life.
Austin had fished in Nova Scotia’s Minas Basin “many, many, many times but in a bigger boat,” he told McClatchy News. The excursion on Sunday, July 30, was his first time fishing from his kayak.
Hoping to catch some striped bass, he picked a spot and anchored his kayak. When nothing bit, he changed tactics and put a live mackerel on the line.
“Then (I) just lowered it right off the side of my kayak,” Austin said. “I didn’t have to fish very long, and my reel starts clicking.”
“I got something on. She’s pretty big,” he said in a YouTube video of the encounter. The reel bent under the weight of the catch.
The animal swam beneath the kayak, and Austin got a glimpse of it. Moments later, the “massive” creature leaped out of the water and exposed its full size, video shows.
“When I saw it, I was pretty shocked,” he said.
At the time, Austin thought he’d snagged a porpoise — but it was actually something much deadlier. He’d caught a juvenile great white shark.
The shark was identified by experts from the New England Aquarium in Boston and the University of Guelph in Ontario, Austin wrote in a Facebook post. The great white was between 6 to 8 feet long and weighed between 200 and 250 pounds.
“It was the biggest fish I ever, ever hooked. And I’ve caught a lot of big fish,” he said.
As Austin initially wrestled his catch, “it was moving that kayak over to the right with no problem at all … and, I mean, that’s a very, very heavy kayak.”
Concerned for the fish’s safety — and his own — Austin cut the line when the shark swam under him the second time. “There it goes ... holy cow,” he said at the end of the video.
“That shark was probably underneath my boat for a while,” he told McClatchy News on Aug. 7. It “came back twice to my kayak. The first time, when I first saw it directly under the kayak, it was just kind of looking at me.”
“What would’ve happened on its third time coming back? I might not have been so lucky … because great whites, they like to charge boats (and) take bites out of boats,” he said. “They like to leap onto boats. They can be very, very aggressive.”
“I’m glad I cut the line,” Austin said. “It’s still scary when you think back. My life could have ended right then and there.”
“This was by far the biggest adrenaline rush of my life absolutely,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
After letting the great white shark go, Austin stayed out fishing for another hour and a half — something he “certainly wouldn’t” have done if he’d recognized the dangerous animal sooner.
“The next time I go out there in my kayak, I think I’ll have somebody else with me,” he said. “I don’t think I’m gonna do that alone next time.”
Minas Basin is along the western coast of Nova Scotia, about 560 miles east of Ottawa.
This story was originally published August 8, 2023 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Kayaker fishing for bass snags something much larger — and deadly, Canada video shows."
