What may be the first mako shark ever landed in Southwest Florida waters could end up as the tip of an iceberg — evidence of an annual winter run of the sharks some anglers regard as the greatest big game fish of all.

But first, an account of the first sighting reported in many years: “Absolutely one of the most awe-

inspiring things we ever saw,” said Ron Woolery, captain of a private 31-foot boat recently approached by a big mako 57 miles west of Sanibel.

Woolery, 62, and Fort Myers anglers Andrew Atkinson, Jason Williams and Curtis Colbert had just begun chumming for snapper over the 127-foot-deep wreck of the Staten Island ferry Stoney Point when the cobalt blue beast rose from the depths and held the anglers captivated for a half-hour.

They estimated the shark was 10 feet long as it repeatedly approached the boat closely enough to touch — fearless and elegant in its power.

“I’ve seen a lot of sharks around the world, bigger than that,” Woolery said of experiences in Australia and New Zealand with huge hammerhead and tiger sharks.

“But I’ve never experienced such an animal, the way it was built and the way it acted,” he said of the mako —identified by experts at the Mote Marine Laboratory Center for Shark Research as a shortfin. The great fish was estimated at 300 pounds — a big one, even though shortfins are known to grow to more than 1,200 pounds.

Woolery and company teased the shark with a strip of amberjack tossed out on a lure of surgical tubing, and it once cut off their marker buoy out of curiosity, but they never tried to set the small treble hook, or otherwise even considered trying to catch it. After 30 minutes, they had to leave the shark and start the long trip home.

Back at Fish Tale Marina on Fort Myers Beach, when Head Hunter Charters Capt. Sean McQuade and mate Robbie Trammell heard of the encounter, it sparked vivid memories and a burning desire.

McQuade, 34, and Trammell, 19, said they have been close-mouthed about seeing and hooking makos on the Stoney. The first one was hooked three years ago by mate Vinny Muscerella, whose monofilament leader was shredded as the great shark made a bounding, tail-walking charge across the surface. That reinforced what they thought had been a mako hookup three weeks earlier, on the wreck of the Honduran freighter Fantastico, in 110 feet.

Next, Corey Hickson jumped a mako that shot 15 feet out of the water, only 5 feet off the transom of McQuade’s 40-footer Gulf Business. That shark left the angler’s relatively light tackle in a shambles.

McQuade said before he began working for Hunter three years ago he targeted makos for years off Long Island. Sometimes they caught two or three per day, and he had a hand in landing more than 50 for both sport and profit. So he was raring to give the Stoney’s latest inhabitant a go when his charter last Thursday canceled due to iffy weather.

Unexpected sighting

Trammell got sick as they rocked in 5-foot seas on the trip out, but the seas laid down as they approached the wreck, and soon they had caught several amberjacks for bait. McQuade dropped the filets of one fish halfway to the bottom on a 9-aught Penn reel that had been salvaged off the same wreck years before by a diver on a Head Hunters charter.

In close sequence, Trammell hooked up with another amberjack on relatively light tackle, and 80-pound line began whirring off the big reel, leading the men to think the jack had entangled the shark bait. But then they peered into the depths and saw the mako — shark line trailing from its jaws — catch and eat the amberjack on Trammel’s rod.

Not quite prepared for such quick action, McQuade never set the hook on the shark. Instead, he tried to quickly rig a float on his anchor line so it could be cast off in order to follow the shark. But the shark spit out the bait.

It soon returned, taking the bait 20 feet below the boat as another bigger mako passed close by. The shark ripped 150 yards of line off Trammel’s reel and then settled into a grueling duel of deep runs that ended after four hours, with the shark coming close enough to the boat for McQuade to sink a flying gaff into its gills.

The men then tied off four ropes to the ends and quarters of the shark, alternately hoisting and tying off each rope in wearying 4-inch lifts over the next hour. When they got the shark to gunnel level and rolled it into the cockpit, they were tired to giddiness. They finally reached port at 10 p.m., and then began cleaning their 9-foot, 300-pound catch.

According to Head Hunter Charters owner Jeff Hunter, not a scrap of meat was left on the mako. The extra steaks went to the families of a dozen firefighters at two companies where McQuade and Trammell hope to soon work.

Some criticism

Jose Castro, a shark expert at the Mote Marine Laboratory Center for Shark Research in Sarasota, noted makos are among the few of more than 450 shark species that are commercially exploited.

Some anglers who heard of the Fort Myers Beach catch criticized McQuade and Trammell on an Internet forum for killing a fish so rare in the Gulf. But Castro discounted such worries.

“Makos are commercially caught by the swordfishing fleet and by most of the tuna fleet in tremendous numbers, so one being caught by recreational fishermen would have a negligible impact on the populations,” Castro said. “Thousands and thousands of mako sharks are caught in the commercial fisheries.”

In fact, Castro said the Gulf is one of the few places scientists are able to study the life cycle of large makos. Pregnant females almost never occur in the Atlantic, and although he has seen only five or six in the Gulf, “that’s four or five more than most people,” Castro said.

Castro said there is a winter run in the Gulf, especially around oil rigs off Louisiana in January and February, although the makos disappear in March. He believes they prey on “high-energy fishes” with lots of fat, such as tunas and amberjacks.

He recalled one study by scientists who fed tunas to makos, but found the makos wouldn’t take a fresh barracuda, even though cudas are prized by other shark species. Instead, when the divers ran out of tunas they found themselves being blindsided by attacking makos, which fortunately bit only their swim fins.

Castro said that is exactly the behavior they exhibit when they attack swordfish, disabling the dangerous billfish by biting off their tails with swift attacks from below.

“They are so beautifully camouflaged. Their dark blue is the same wavelength as the indigo of the water, and their white bellies are like the reflections on the surface if you’re trying to look up at them,” Castro said.