No one knows more about catching giant sharks than Frank Mundus- no one!
Jul 20, 2008
He says it was the funniest movie he's ever seen. Laughed so hard his eyes teared up, and when he was able to wipe them clear and focus again on the screen, another hilarious scene sent him into hysterics.
It may seem odd at first to think of Frank Mundus rolling in the aisle while others were running for the hills. The knee-slapper that Mundus says still cracks him up was "Jaws," the original summer blockbuster that turned a great white shark into a movie star and was based on the novel by Peter Benchley. But spend any amount of time with the eccentric former charter boat captain and it becomes clear that Mundus is not susceptible to the impulses and responses that shackle ordinary folk. His personality crackles like a short circuit, throwing off bursts of absurd energy at times least expected. Tell him to go left, he instinctively pulls right. Have a seat? No, he'd rather stand. Show him a movie with the sole purpose of scaring the bejesus out of everyone and making them afraid to ever go in the water again, and he gets the giggles.
Of course it wasn't the plot that had him chuckling, but the details— the foolishness of the details. The harpoon guns, the barrels, the shark pulling the boat backwards, all of it ludicrously wrong. That's no way to catch a shark. And Mundus should know. After all, he was the inspiration for the cranky, salty Captain Quint (a matter recognized by nearly everyone ...except Benchley, who insisted it was a composite character). He is the man often credited with catching the largest fish ever using a rod and a reel, a 3,427-pound Great White shark taken on August 6, 1986, after a whale carcass was spotted about 30 miles off Montauk. Mundus acted on a hunch there might be someone around looking for a free meal.
He practically invented the sport of sharking, marketing "Monster Fishing" from the East End of Long Island beginning in 1951 and making a study of the way the fish behave, move and react. He perfected the controversial techniques of using whale blubber as chum, harpooning sharks with barrels (not with a gun, but by throwing the darts like Queequeg) and letting them run themselves to death. But his prickly personality has driven away most of his fishing commrades and connections; it may be easier to find another ton-and-a-half Great White in Montauk than to find a kind word about Mundus.
Now he is putting the finishing touches on his life's story, rectifying decades-old contradictions in ways that make sense only to Mundus. He has nothing but rancor for Benchley, considering him an obstinate author who never even had the courtesy to tell him "Thanks," and his disdain for "Jaws" is apparent in every sentence he speaks of the movie. "I got screwed," he says candidly (as if Mundus would speak any other way), "and I'm trying to suck some money out of it."
He's trying to increase awareness to how sportfishing and even the tagging process he helped develop is destroying shark populations around the world, perhaps as close to an amends as Mundus can make. And, at 83 years old, he is enjoying what could be the final fishing trips of his hyperbolic life, replacing the exaggerations with authenticities that were long ago intertwined in a swirl that became the Mundus Legend.
"What people say about me is all fake bull," he said. "I tell the real bull."
The Beatles had their White Album. Mundus has his "Great White Album." It's an office binder, the kind you could pick up at Staples for a few bucks, and it holds 36 laminated pages detailing one of the top fish stories of the 20th Century.
There are blurry photos of Mundus jumping out of his boat, the Cricket II, to stand on the dead but buoyant whale he'd found, arms outstretched for balance as he inspects the bite marks and the still-flowing blood from the fresh kill.
There are shots of murky shadows looming below the carcass, and picking out the shark can be like reading an ultrasound, but there is one in which the outline of the 17-foot predator is unmistakable.
There are paragraphs detailing how Mundus found the whale heading home from a charter and shortly after shooing his customers off the boat headed back out to stalk a monster. How he and his crew spent the night on the boat tethered to the whale, listening to it bang against the hull while sharks dismantled it in the dark. And how, on a summer day nearly 20 years ago, amid some of the calmest seas of his career, the 3,427-pound shark took a hook, then fought for an hour and 40 minutes before the first gaff was inserted, then another hour to secure with a tail rope.
How much of it is true depends entirely on how much you want to believe, and those who hacked up the money for the day on the water can't afford to bring their skepticism in tow.
"On paper, I caught the fish," says Donnie Braddick who was the actual angler on the pole when the big shark hit. Braddick was captaining the charter boat Fish On when he spotted the dead whale, put the pieces together, flagged down Mundus (whom he worked for as a mate in the early 1970s) and has since been in the shadow of the Monster Man. Mundus acknowledges Braddick's accomplishment, but that hasn't stopped him from talking about it as if it were his own for the past 19 years. Mundus was basically the chauffer, driving the shark back to the docks. When he arrived around midnight and over 1,000 people were packed into the marina to see the big fish, it came off Mundus' boat and everyone just assumed the Monster Man had struck again. Braddick didn't think to tell them any differently.
Braddick's annonymity runs deep. There is a display at Epcot in Walt Disney World where visitors can stick their heads through famous pictures to get their own snapshots. You can pretend to be Michael Jordan sailing through the air, or make like you are pedaling a flying bicycle with ET in the basket. Then there is the picture of Braddick with the 3,427-pound Great White shark. Naturally there's a big hole where the face should be.
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