Daniel Arispe says his love of catching sharks came from his family and seeing the movie classic at a young age.
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — One of the most famous movies of all-time, Jaws, celebrated its 50th anniversary Friday and so 3NEWS’ Chris Thomasson decided to catch up with a local shark catcher.
Daniel Arispe of Corpus Christi was the winner of the shark division at last year’s Deep Sea Roundup fishing tournament in Port Aransas. Arispe guesstimates he has caught around 500 sharks in his lifetime, bookended around serving in the Marines as an officer.
He says the key to catching sharks is just like any other fishing: a lot of practice and even more so… patience.
“Big sharks, that’s a lot slower fishing,” Arispe said Friday. “Sometimes we don’t catch anything for weeks and then sometimes you’ll catch two or three in a week. It’s a lot like gambling because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Arispe says Jaws made him afraid of sharks when he was a kid like a lot of others, but he says over time he and others have learned to appreciate them. For him modern shark catching has mostly become CPR (Catch, Photo, Release).
“So it has changed because now any of the shark fishermen you talk to now, they’re all catch, photo, release. They’re all about conservation, about making sure sharks survive for the next generations to enjoy doing the same thing that we’re doing.”
Arispe says he’s looking forward to the Sharkathon annual tournament here in October which is all catch, photo and release as well. He also says he’s a little bit of a mix of quint and Brody as far as Jaws characters go.