For many years, AJ Rotondella, owner of Apex Anglers—a land-based shark fishing guide service—has been trying to catch a thresher shark in the New Jersey surf. On June 3rd, after 10 years of guiding anglers to incredible fishing experiences across the state, he got a taste of the excitement that each of his first-time clients feel when they come tight to a shark for the first time.
After deciding to take the day off from guiding, Rotondella’s cousins, who have wanted to go shark fishing with him for years, decided to join him and his friends, Mark Jones and Chef Dan, for an evening on the beach. Little did anyone know they were in for the experience of a lifetime.
Rotondella hit the sand in the early evening as bathers began to leave the beach. As a shark fishing guide, his number one goal is to be as respectful as possible to swimmers and other beachgoers. “They have the right of way, so we will not put baits in the water until it’s completely free of swimmers,” said Rotondella. By rule of thumb, he typically won’t even go to the beach until the lifeguards have left for the day. “Even once the lifeguards are gone, people will stay in the water, so we frequently just sit there with all of our gear and wait until they’re finished swimming,” Rotondella continued.
With the beach clear of swimmers and bathers, he set up shop on a stretch of shoreline that has consistently produced on guided trips in years past. Rotondella noted the lack of bait in the area, but based on his experience, bait presence has not played a major role in how good or bad the fishing will be. Bunker schools are almost always a promising sign, but on this day, he opted to drop a 10-pound bluefish around 350 yards from the beach using his drone, which is legal in New Jersey. However, in New York, the use of drones to deploy baits for recreational shark fishing from shore, as well as paddling baits from the beach, was recently prohibited by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
After catching a couple of sand tigers, Rotondella cut 2 to 3 pounds off the tail end of the gator blue and deployed it with the drone around 6:45 p.m. “I decided to use a big bait because during this week in June for the past 2 years, we either hooked or landed a bull shark on guided trips,” he said. The first time, on June 12th, 2022, an Apex client battled a shark that fought differently than anything Rotondella had battled in the Jersey surf before, but it broke free. Then, in 2023, in the same area, Rotondella and his clients hooked and landed a bull shark that fought identically to the fish they lost just one year and six days prior. “I set out this jumbo bluefish bait in an effort to repeat history and to try to build some sort of bull shark pattern,” said Rotondella.
Around 7:30 p.m., just 45 minutes after putting out the bluefish, line started peeling off of Rotondella’s Avet TRX 80W. “The rod went down and this fish took the bait much faster than the usual suspects,” he chuckled. The reel is spooled with 200-pound-test Diamond Generation 3 hollow core braid with 150 yards of 250-pound-test Lindgren-Pitman top shot and a 50-foot, 1,200-pound-test monofilament leader. “It’s overkill, but it handles just about anything we can catch on the beach. We’re out there every night of the summer looking for the biggest of the big, so we have to be prepared.”
Rotondella’s family watched in amazement as the line ripped out. “I looked at my cousins and their kids and said: ‘Listen, I know you guys want to catch a shark, but this is not a normal species.’ As it turns out, they just wanted to see a shark, so they let me fight it,” Rotondella said. He picked up the rod, harnessed in, and settled in for the battle. “I came tight to the fish, then it suddenly went slack, then I came tight again, and then there was tons of slack. It had to be over a minute of reeling as fast as possible before I was tight to the fish for a third time,” he continued. “Luckily I put the brakes on him early, because the fish then pulled 55-pounds of drag for 30 seconds straight. That’s when we saw a splash about 300 yards out.”
Everyone was shouting “It jumped! It jumped!”, and began speculating what it could be. Based on the size of the bait and the speed of the fish, Rotondella thought it was a “unicorn”—his term for a rogue inshore mako shark, which remains on his bucket list of Jersey shark species. Then, the line went totally slack again as the fish rushed the beach, but it had stopped taking drag, and the fight settled in to a pump-and-reel battle. As it approached the shore, the fish ran up the beach before making a sharp U-turn and rushing back south. That’s when Rotondella saw the unmistakable tail of a large thresher shark, and the whole group lost their minds, which can be seen and heard in the video he shared to the Apex Anglers Instagram page. “Despite the fish’s fast maneuvers and taking some line, the whole fight lasted about 15 minutes at most,” said Rotondella.
Once they got it in the wash, Rotondella put the harness on the sand spike and grabbed the leader. His friends, Mark Jones and Chef Dan, assisted him in handling the fish as he removed the 24/0 circle hook from the corner of the shark’s mouth. With the hook safely removed and the shark back in the water, Rotondella had officially checked a New Jersey shore-caught adult thresher shark off his bucket list.
They didn’t measure the fish, but Rotondella said that his wingspan, which is around 6 feet, was less than the distance from the shark’s nose to the base of the tail. “I’m not sure how big it was, but including the tail length, I’d conservatively estimate it to be around 12 feet long,” he continued. “From what I’ve read, they say the tail length of a thresher shark is approximately the same length as its body.”
Rotondella noted the irony of the catch, because for years, he has unsuccessfully tried to land a thresher, and the one time he is not on a guided trip making the effort, it happens. “The most surprising part of it all, is this catch went against everything I have previously attempted for threshers in the past; it feels like a complete fluke,” said the decade-long shark fishing guide. In the past, he has typically fished with bunker beneath a float, but as it turns out, a heavy, XL bluefish on bottom did the trick. He also noted that upon his return to the beach the next day, there were schools of bunker everywhere. He suspects they were the reason the thresher came in so close, even though there were no visible signs of bait on the beach the night before.
Landing and releasing any 12-foot-long shark, regardless of the species, is no easy feat. But when asked about what made this catch so special to him, Rotondella replied: “As far as I know, it’s the only adult thresher ever caught by a land-based fishermen on the east coast. At this point in my career, being so immersed in the shark fishing scene, I feel like I’d know if another one had been caught.”
And to add to the fishing experience of a lifetime, he was able to do it all with family by his side. “What a day for my family to show up after all these years!” Rotondella laughed. “That’s why you’ve got to go and just put your time in, because you never know when something amazing might happen.”
With an adult thresher from shore now under his belt, Rotondella’s next goal is either a Jersey blue shark, or that unicorn mako he’s been after for years.
To book a trip with AJ Rotondella and Apex Anglers, visit apexanglers.com.
