Sometimes the best things in life come to those who wait. Blaine Kenny and Dylan Wier know that better than most.
The two shark fishing guides spent an entire cold winter night camped out on a Florida beach, sitting in the dark for hours with massive bait in the water, hoping something big would come along.
What they eventually pulled to shore was beyond even their wildest dreams: a great white shark estimated at more than 1,200 pounds and 12 feet long.
A long night on the sand
Kenny and Wier own Coastal Worldwide shark fishing tours, and they’d chosen Navarre Beach on Santa Rosa Island, tucked between Pensacola and Destin, Florida, for their overnight on-shore fishing expedition.
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They set up their equipment on the beach the night before and settled in to wait through the dark winter hours.
The bait they used tells you just how serious they were. Kenny baited his line with the head of an 80-pound yellowfin tuna. Wier used something even bigger: the head of a 150-pound swordfish.
These are enormous pieces of bait, the kind designed to attract only the largest predators patrolling the Gulf waters.
Then came the waiting. Hour after hour through the night, with nothing but the sound of waves and the hope that something was out there.
The massive bite came at 8 a.m.
When the line finally screamed to life the next morning, it was clear Kenny had hooked something powerful. The fish was heading east at an impressive rate, pulling so hard they considered chasing it down the beach.
“This is absolutely nuts dude, he’s screaming east,” Kenny said in the video. “We might have to end up chasing him at some point.”
What followed was a grueling battle. The fight lasted nearly one hour, and Kenny was visibly tired by the end of it.
Reeling in any large shark from the shore is physically demanding, but wrestling with a fish that would turn out to weigh more than half a ton pushed the limits of both the angler and his gear.
Standing on the beach, unable to see what lurked beneath the surface far offshore, they could only speculate based on the sheer power and behavior of whatever was on the end of the line.
“It’s a big, big wintertime shark,” Wier said. “There’s only a few things it can be, a mako, a giant tiger, a white shark or the biggest dusky we’ve ever seen in our lives.”
A drone solved the mystery
Unable to identify the catch from shore, they turned to modern technology. They sent a drone out over the water for a bird’s-eye view, and the camera showed them exactly what they’d been hoping for.
“Look at that, that’s a white shark!” Wier says. “That’s a monster, dude, that’s not just any white shark.”
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The aerial footage confirmed what the sheer power of the fish had suggested. They had hooked a great white shark from the beach.
Kenny eventually reeled the shark close enough to shore to unhook and release it. Up close, the size was staggering.
According to a Facebook post, the shark was estimated to be more than 1,200 pounds and 12 feet long.
“This has been the day that Blaine has been dreaming about since he dropped his first bait,” Wier said.
Footage of the catch was shared on YouTube on Jan. 31, 2024. The video has since drawn more than 1.2 million views, turning what was already an extraordinary personal achievement into a viral sensation.
The jaw-dropping catch captivated viewers far beyond the fishing community.
They’d actually done it before
Here’s what makes the story even more remarkable.
This wasn’t the first time Coastal Worldwide had tangled with a great white from shore. The company previously caught an 11-foot great white in March 2023—10 months earlier—off Orange Beach, Alabama.
That earlier catch drew attention from the scientific community. Dr. Marcus Drymon of Mississippi State University described how rare it was in an interview with WALA.
“This is a very rare event and maybe, if those guys continue to fish from the beach for the next several years and never catch another one like it,” Drymon said of the Alabama catch, adding the species is uncommon in this part of the world and especially from the beach.
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Yet Kenny and Wier managed to do it again less than a year later, this time with an even larger shark. Both catches happened from shore rather than from a boat far offshore.
Released back to the gulf
After the nearly hour-long fight to bring the shark close enough, Kenny unhooked the great white and released it back into the Gulf waters, letting the massive predator swim away.
For Kenny and Wier, that long cold night on Navarre Beach ended with a moment few anglers will ever experience.
As Wier put it, it was a day Kenny had been dreaming about since the very beginning of his fishing career—and now more than a million viewers have witnessed it alongside them.
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