Jason Landerer (pictured above) caught and released two tiger sharks—a species New York’s own biologists describe as a rare visitor— off Long Beach in August. The first one broke a rod.
Jason Landerer of Long Beach, New York was bandaging a cut on his thumb from an earlier release when his Penn Slammer 8500 began to scream from the sand spike. He pulled his Tsunami Airwave Elite and set the hook. The fish did not stop. The reel continued to sing and his rod lurched towards the pitch-black surf.
Line was still going out with the drag locked all the way down, so he backed off a few clicks to avoid a break-off, which he regretted immediately. His first thought was a bull shark, a species that turns up in Long Island headlines more each summer.
Fair warning on the clips below: they were shot in the dark, with a big tiger shark on the line and a rod in pieces. The language reflects that.
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The Airwave Elite, loaded well beyond what it was built for against a locked-down 8500 reel and 80-pound braid, exploded in Landerer’s hands.
“We’re doing this old school,” he told his fishing partner, Christopher Meng-Killeen.
He wrapped the braid around the PVC sand spike, layering it over itself ten times so it would bite instead of slip. Meng-Killeen handlined the shark off the spike while Landerer went digging through his truck for another reel. He came back with another Slammer, a 10500, mounted it on one of Meng-Killeen’s rods, and tied a uni-to-uni knot to splice the braid across, with the fish still on.
While all of this was happening, smaller sharks were hitting their other baited hooks. What followed was a forty-minute fight and a game of over and under as the shark wove between the other lines, which they had not yet had time to clear.
Landing the Tiger Shark
Meng-Killeen waded in to leader it, and in the headlamp he made out a whip-like tail, a blocky head, and a yellow eye before the blotches registered.
Rinse and Repeat
Then they did it again the next night. A cast-out ray bait went, and this one was a juvenile tiger, considerably smaller than the first.
When Landerer went to remove the hook, he found a second one already set in the shark’s upper jaw. It was a smaller hook, the kind that comes off a hi-lo rig meant for far more modest fish, left behind by someone who almost certainly had no idea what had picked it up. He took that one out too before releasing it.
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Not one, but two tiger sharks landed and released from the same stretch of Long Beach sand.
Why Tiger Sharks off Long Island Are Notable
Tiger sharks are a southern fish. New York’s own species status assessment describes them as rarely encountered north of the Mid-Atlantic Bight, with only occasional sightings in shallow coastal waters here. On the Atlantic coast the species ranges from Cape Cod to Uruguay, moving into temperate water during the warm months and heading back toward the tropics in winter. August is when you would see one here, if you were going to see one at all.
New York lists the tiger shark as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need, and the IUCN Red List has it as Near Threatened. Tiger sharks grow fast and produce large litters, and both assessments note they do not face a high risk of extinction overall. What they do note is how thin the data is. There is little information on pupping, nursery areas, or population numbers, which is what makes local declines hard to see coming.
This summer has produced others. Anglers landed a tiger shark from the New Jersey surf, and Cape Cod has turned up several in recent seasons, including a juvenile taken by a shore fisherman and one caught days after another was seen eating a turtle.
Landerer’s Setup
- Rod: Tsunami Airwave Elite, replaced mid-fight with one of Meng-Killeen’s surf rods
- Reels: Penn Slammer 8500, replaced mid-fight with a Penn Slammer 10500
- Line: 80 lb PowerPro braid
- Hook: 16/0 Cast-All circle
- Leader: Cable
- Bait: Eel, cast from the beach
- Spike: PVC pipe
A Fishing Log for His Son
Landerer posts his catches to an Instagram account called J Hooks Fishing Club. He started the account for his son, as a way to keep a log of the catches and memories. And catching a pair of tiger sharks off the beach… that qualifies.
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