Outdoors Column | A close encounter with a great white shark in Gulf of Mexico. There’s a video

Gulf anglers truly never know what they’ll see when fishing offshore. Most dream of big fish and calm weather while few think they’ll live out a scene more reminiscent of the movie “Jaws” with a great white deciding to pay them a visit and sink its teeth into their boat.

That slightly terrifying moment played out for boat owner Erika Almond and her friends when they ventured out of Tampa Bay aboard the Offshore Therapy with Captain Tyler Levesque on a cool January morning.

“We were doing a little yellowtail snapper and mangrove snapper fishing about 65 miles offshore out of Venice,” Almond said. “We had a pretty good chum slick going and noticed a shark heading our way. Not unusual, we expect sharks when we’re chumming for fish like that. But what made this unique is that it was a 14- to 16- foot great white shark!”

In disbelief the crew started filming as the curious shark nosed in on their chum line, right up to the back of the boat.

“This shark was not going to leave. He was there for about two to three hours, circled our boat continuously, bit the back of the boat several times and even bit the engines several times.”

Getting so close to the 34-foot SeaVeeZ and Mercury engines Levesque reached down and was able to pet the beastly creature as it slowly swam up to the boats transom. Along with the great white were a few tag-a-longs the anglers noticed, as a school of cobia shadowed the shark.

Even with such a unique experience the anglers couldn’t resist pulling them away from their escort.

“We caught all the cobia around it! The shark was not interested in what we were reeling in, but was more interested in the fish we were throwing back,” Almond explained, also noting she never really felt in danger.

Cobia are known to travel along with species much bigger than themselves. Whale sharks, which are not uncommon along the Gulf coast in the spring, seem to always play host to cobia.

“The last part of it was when it came under the motors, almost to attack them again. It hit them so hard it caused the boat to rock and then took off, and that was the last we saw of it.”

Back to fishing the crew had an exceptional day catching yellowtail snapper, red grouper, vermillion snapper and more to go with their cobia. But that will forever be a footnote of from the day they had a run in with the oceans most feared predator.

This story was originally published January 29, 2021 at 11:15 AM.