Capt. Art Cortes said it had been his experience that the apex predators like sharks and tuna pass through the Dump this time of year. The Dump was one of Frank Mundus’s favorite hunting grounds.

    “When I was a young man, I bought Frank’s book ‘Sportfishing for Sharks.’ I read it page by page and that’s how I learned to shark fish. He’s the guy who kicked it off. I admired and respected him,” Captain Cortes said on Monday.

    Last Thursday, the Dump seemed to proffer up a tribute to a great fisherman, at least that’s how Captain Cortes saw it. 

 Mike Alymer, the mate on the Half Back charter boat, hoisted the nose of a 508-pound male mako caught last Thursday by Andrew Baum.

 “We had a 100-pound mako that went away. We lost him. Then we had another shark on. I thought it was a blue; the angler was fighting him. I had left an extra line in close to the boat. Left the rod in gear. He ate the bait. I gave the angler the rod. This fish rocketed right next to the boat, all 9 feet 4 inches. It was very adrenalizing,” Cortes said of a 506-pound mako that took Andrew Baum an hour and a half to subdue.

    “The first hour, it made long runs. It was 100-pound test line. He kept spooling us. We chased him to get the line back. He spooled us at least three or four times. The last half-hour he settled down to an up-and-down tug-of-war. I think Frank had something to do with it.”

Captain Cortes said he gave the angler the option to release the big fish, but Baum said he had never caught a mako, saw a wall mount in his future, and also wanted the meat for his table. The charter captain said he justified keeping the fish because at least it was a male of the species with less reproductive potential than a female of the same size. The mako was unusually big for a male — if not a record, close to it.