Hilton Head fisherman reels in 1,200-pound shark. Its head shook ‘like a golden retriever’

The Hilton Head area is getting busy with tourists making their way here for the holidays, and we’re not just talking about humans.

In this case, it’s great white sharks.

Charter captain Chip Michalove, who has developed a reputation as a great white shark whisperer, spotted one great white off the island and reeled in two others on Saturday.

One of those was a 12-foot long, 1,400-pound beast who came halfway out of the water and shook his toothy head “like a golden retriever,” Michalove said.

All three sharks swam off unharmed, and one of them now wears a satellite tag so he can be tracked by scientists with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, which does research on where sharks live, what they eat and how they behave. The public can watch the sharks’ movements via the Sharktivity app from the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

The apex predators migrate south when the waters off Cape Cod get too cold, typically in early December through March. This year and last, great whites have first been spotted off Hilton Head closer to Christmas because northeast temperatures have stayed warmer longer.

“I’ve been looking for them for weeks, and I haven’t seen one, haven’t caught one,” Michalove said.

“What’s interesting is the great white shark population is booming, going up, and you’d think that the season would start earlier and earlier, but it’s actually starting later,” he explained.

For that reason, expectations for Michalove’s trip Saturday were low, but, about mid-morning, an 11-foot great white made its presence known. It ate both baits and swam away.

Michalove said great whites are much smarter and much faster than other fish.

They don’t just automatically take the bait, he explained. These “dinosaurs that made it through the ice age” will check out the boat and the bait in a way that shows they have a thought process, not just an instinct.

Patience paid off for the fishermen about two hours later when Michalove and his crew finally reeled in the season’s first great white. This one was 8 feet, 4 inches, and they managed to get it on the side of the boat so they could tag it.

Bill Masters

Tagged sharks are given names, and that’s not a task Michalove takes lightly. In the past, he’s named sharks for one Bluffton teen with mental challenges and another Bluffton teen who was killed in a hit-and-run crash, among others.

The great white tagged Saturday is now named after the late Hilton Head island fisherman Bill Masters, who died after fighting cancer in November 2020.

“Such a nice guy,” Michalove said. “He was one of those guys that, if you had car trouble in Atlanta, he would come get you. He was just one of those good-hearted people.”

Michalove had planned to take Masters on a shark fishing trip, but he died before the great whites showed up off the Lowcountry last December. Michalove promised Masters he would name the first male shark he tagged for him, and it took until Saturday for that to happen.

Last season, Michalove caught a lot of sharks, but he didn’t tag one male.

A full day

Michalove and his crew had been on the water nearly 12 hours Saturday when they reeled in a second great white, this one a feisty male measuring 12 feet long.

He grabbed the bait and “took off like a train,” Michalove said. “We chased that thing for a good 45 minutes, got him on the side of the boat, took some pictures.”

This time, the shark was fighting, so they opted not to tag it and just set it free.

“A shark’s well-being is more important than tagging,” Michalove said.

After “Shark Week”

Michalove, who operates Outcast Sport Fishing on Hilton Head, was featured over the summer as part of the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” programming.

After more than a decade of attempting to hook a great white off the island, Michalove proved the unbelievers wrong with his first catch in January 2014. Since then, he’s caught and tagged dozens, helping scientists to understand more about the species and its migration patterns.

Last year, two great whites were tracked going from the Lowcountry, around the Florida Keys and into the Gulf of Mexico to Pensacola before turning around and heading back to Cape Cod.

“Chip took a fish that wasn’t even listed on DNR’s website as being a fish that was caught in S.C., and he found out they were here,” charter Captain Fuzzy Davis told The Island Packet in 2019. “... It’s really incredible.”