When you break a state record during a fishing tournament, you generally win the tournament, too. Such was the case in this year’s Texas City Jaycees Tackle Time Fishing Tournament—say it five times fast—in which Tim McClellen landed a record hammerhead shark. His catch topped the leaderboard and beat the previous state hammerhead record by more than 150 pounds.
The tournament was held June 30 through July 9 along the coast near Texas City, just inland from Galveston and southeast of Houston. The ten-day tournament saw a number of big sharks landed, including the 964-pound and 817-pound tiger sharks that took second and third place, respectively, but it was McClellen’s 1,033-pound hammerhead that took top honors. The shark beat the previous state hammerhead record of 871 pounds, one that had stood for 37 years, by 162.
Mark Johnson caught the previous record June 4, 1980. That shark measured 163 and 8/10 inches (13.65 feet), while McClellen’s shark’s length has not been released.
McClellen’s shark not only beat the previous hammerhead record, but it also came close to clinching the top spot in all of Texas’s fishing history. The largest fish ever landed in the Lone Star State is a 1,129-pound tiger shark that was caught in 1992.