By Bill Heavey. His massive body is covered in scars from encounters with fishermen’s machetes, harpoons and boat propellers. Native Area Guides “There is a sense of knowing that there is something big out there. By that point, the shark already was a bit of a TV celebrity due to regular segments on Tampa’s Fox 13 News by longtime sportscaster “Salty” Sol Fleischman. The shark swam away with the large knife still embedded in its dorsal fin.There was a swastika-shaped scar on its forehead, a result of either a propeller scar or the carvings of some wayward local youth, depending on the source.
It just so happens that the biggest, meanest hammerhead seen in local waters at any given time is given the moniker of Old Hitler. Captain Jimmy Burnsed has been involved with these Tournaments from the start. In 1993, Old Hitler again gained national notoriety after being mentioned in the December issue of Sports Illustrated. Book your shark fishing charter trip with us today! "Sharks typically give birth sometime during the summer months." Each spring, thousands of tarpon gather in the pass. For as long as fishermen have set their lines in the Gulf, encounters with those massive hammerheads have been common. In 1942 alone, the German submarines recorded 56 attacks on American ships off the coast of Florida, 40 of which ended up on the ocean’s floor. BOCA GRANDE, Fla. — For decades, legendary hammerhead Old Hitler has been the subject of fishing folklore up and down the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.Depending on the source, Old Hitler has a head as wide as a pickup truck, and is longer than most of the fishing boats it’s been spotted from.The hammerhead is big enough to swallow other sharks in a single bite, and strong enough to drag a Jeep from the shoreline by its bumper-mounted winch.His massive body is covered in scars from encounters with fishermen’s machetes, harpoons and boat propellers.Even though the legend has evolved over the last century, what always remains constant — Old Hitler is the biggest, meanest shark to ever roam the waters from Everglades City to Tampa Bay.The mighty shark has been the subject of numerous newspaper headlines and documentaries over the years. Wilbur had heard numerous tales of giant sharks from his father, who worked on the old phosphate docks. “It just makes for good reading and good storytelling.”The average life span of a great hammerhead is between 25 and 30 years, with some sharks believed to live up to 50. There is a mystery to the seas, and Old Hitler fits into that picture,” said Scotty Lee Rexroat, frontman of the band Treble Hook, who tells the tale of Old Hitler in his song, “Shark Fishing on the Skyway Pier.”“Everybody wants to catch the biggest fish out there and that is why the legend of Old Hitler has had such staying power.”So as long as fishermen continue to lose their prized catches to the shadowy creatures that roam just beneath the surface in the waters of Southwest Florida, the legend of Old Hitler will continue to be told.The legend of Old Hitler surrounds stories of large hammerhead sharks, similar to the one in this Florida State Archives photograph. They routinely grow to mammoth proportions, reaching 20 feet in length and can easily weigh more than 1,000 pounds.“It’s amazing that these animals have been able to survive through several mass extinction events with little change to their biology,” said Dr. Matt Ajemian, marine biologist and member of the Shark Week expedition.“They’ve got such a unique morphology with the hammer, and they are one of the biggest sharks in terms of ones that humans come in contact with, especially near the shore where encounters are prevalent,” said Dr. Greg Stunz, director of the Harte Research Institute and also part of the Shark Week expedition.Hammerheads are frequent visitors along the Gulf Coast, arriving en masse as they follow the schools of tarpon heading north. The freighter was torpedoed and sank 55 miles off the coast of Marco Island. The mighty shark has been the subject of numerous newspaper headlines and documentaries over the years. It is a succession that continues to this day. Many fishermen claimed to be lucky to be alive after the encounter. But after the fanfare died down, biologists with the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota discovered that the hammerhead was carrying a litter of 55 pups. Dimock chronicled his own brush with a more-than-noteworthy-sized hammerhead on the end of his line off the coast of Cayo Costa, in his book, “Florida Enchantments.”“I held my breath as I thought how a single stroke of that powerful tail, followed by a few judicious bites, would dispose of canoe and contents, leaving no trace of either, excepting that the weight of a wandering tiger of the sea would have been increased about one-fifth,” he wrote.Boca Grande Pass, the tiny body of water connecting Lee and Charlotte counties at the mouth of the Peace and Myakka rivers, soon became a world-renowned haven for sharks of epic proportions. By that point, the shark already was a bit of a TV celebrity due to regular segments on Tampa’s Fox 13 News by longtime sportscaster “Salty” Sol Fleischman.