It was a bright, calm morning off the coast of Mississippi on August 15 when my son Eric McNally and five buddies ran out of Biloxi for some daybreak spotted seatrout action.
“It was so hot we didn’t want to run offshore, so we headed to an inshore place at dawn where we could fish for a couple hours,” Eric tells Outdoor Life. “We got to our spot just as the sun was rising above the Gulf. We all got into the water, because wading is the quickest and best way to catch shallow trout, and it’s cooler, too.”
They left Eric’s beached boat and fanned out to find fish. They each had a small pack of minimal tackle. Every angler also had a “fish bag,” which is a fabric floating bag they put their fish in to keep them alive rather than using an old-style stringer.
Seatrout Fisherman Attacked by a Shark in Shallow Water
A bag is preferred for stowing fish, because a stringer with fish attached is an invitation to sharks. The bag covers caught fish and is easier to use.
But Eric learned that a fish bag isn’t always a deterrent to a big aggressive shark looking for a quick meal.
“We wade and fish with sharks all the time,” says Eric, age 42, a sales manager for Mississippi’s FourShore Transportation. “We usually wade in spring and early summer, and sharks are fewer. Later in summer the water is warmer, there’s lots of baitfish, and there are plenty of sharks. The warmer the water the bigger and more abundant are the sharks.”
He also adds that shark numbers increase when ladyfish and bluefish show in the shallows feeding on bait that trout are also after.
“When you start seeing bluefish and ladyfish slamming into baitfish schools that commotion I think draws more sharks,” he says. “And that’s exactly what happened about 7 a.m. that morning when I waded onto a shallow bar surrounded by deep water. I shouldn’t have been there, but I was.”
He and his fishing buddies were seeing sharks all morning, but the toothy fish seemed to get bigger, more plentiful, and more active as the sun rose.
Eric was casting toward the sun on the sandbar so he had limited visibility as an 8-foot shark swam toward him. He was focused on catching more trout, trying to add a few more fish to the Hookset Floating Fish Bag that was fastened to his wading belt with a quick release clip.
“I felt something pulling on my fish bag, and looked down, and that’s when I saw a big shark head,” he says. “It bit my brand new fish bag and then rolled – tangling in the bag. Its tail came up and out of the water as it rolled, just missing my face. It was at least 8 feet long. It wasn’t a bull shark or tiger. All I know is it was big and brown, and wanted my bag of trout.”
A remarkable video was made of the shark and Eric by his fishing buddy Ivan Strayham, who was wading 30 yards away on a shallow sandbar. Strayham had an elevated camera on a pole attached to his backpack that recorded the shark attack.
When the shark latched onto Eric’s fish bag he had three options: pull back on the bag and fight with the shark that was tangled in it with its teeth and body; unclip the bag with the fish and let the shark take it; kick at the shark and try to make it leave.
“I was just about ready to kick the shark, when it got untangled from my bag and swam away on its own,” said the lifelong, well-traveled native Florida angler. “I immediately started walking backward toward Ivan on the sandbar, watching for the shark, and holding my fishing rod ready to poke at it if it came back.”
He was also stomping his feet as he backtracked, saying that such stomping turns sharks away from wading anglers.
“The sharks aren’t there to eat you, they’re there feeding on baitfish and trout, and we’re in the water and in their way,” he says. “That hot weather day there were lots of big sharks, and we lost a lot of hooked trout within 10 yards of us as we were playing them.
“There also were ladyfish and bluefish making surface commotion in the bait schools, and that excites sharks and draws big ones into the shallows.”
Eric and his wade-fishing pals always use small handheld nets to collect fish they catch.
“It’s not smart to put your hand in the water to unhook a ladyfish or trout. A shark can rush in to take the fish – and your hand, too.”
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Eric and his pals were done trout fishing early that morning and headed back to Biloxi with plenty of trout to clean and put in their freezers.
“I love trout wade fishing about as much as anything,” Eric says. “But we’ve got to be very careful in summer when the water is hot and sharks are abundant and big. A mishap can easily occur on the water, and being [injured] far from shore and medical aid is something no one wants.”
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