South Texas angler lands near-historic massive hammerhead shark
Joe Gonzles, far left, and his friends, Eli Mata, Jose Caballero and Alan Barron, pose for a photograph with a 14-foot, 5-inch great hammerhead shark that Gonzales landed while surf fishing on South Padre Island on Friday, Aug. 1, 2025. (Scarlet Alcocer/Courtesy Joe Gonzales via Facebook)
A South Texas angler hooked the catch of a lifetime, and it's no tall tale being told just to impress friends down at the local watering hole. For this near-historic haul, there's plenty of proof.
Joe Gonzales, of Los Fresnos in the Rio Grande Valley, hooked a 14-foot, 5-inch-long great hammerhead shark while surf fishing off the waters of South Padre Island over the weekend. The catch was about three-fourths of an inch longer than the Texas record and just one inch shy of the world record.
The near-historic catch was celebrated on a Facebook group for local anglers called Boca Chica Beach Legends, which recounted the David vs. Goliath effort it took for Gonzales to land the prehistoric predator on Friday, August 1.
"After a 60-minute battle, Team BCBL (Boca Chich Beach Legends) saw it, the massive dorsal of a 14-foot-5-inch, 1,000-pound (+/-) great hammerhead slicing through the blue and gray Gulf waters," the post reads. "It was a sight that makes your heart pound and your hands shake, even for seasoned shark fishermen."
Gonzales first hooked the massive beast about an hour before sunset while fishing a few miles north of Cameron County Beach Access No. 6, far from where tourists throng in the shallows. Gonzales told MySA that that was intentional. It took nearly an hour to reel it in. But long before he could wrestle the creature ashore, he knew it was something special.
"Once it picked up the 15-pound bait, that's where I knew it was gonna be a big shark," Gonzales told MySA on Monday.
Joe Gonzales, of Los Fresnos, hauled in a near record-breaking great hammerhead shark using heavy duty saltwater fishing rods and reels. (Courtesy Joe Gonzales via Facebook)
Gonzales hooked the shark using a heavy-duty rod and reel combo intended for landing large predator fish like sharks. His kit was custom - an Okuma Makira 80w reel with 150-pound braided line mounted on a custom 10-foot-long rod, he told MySA. After 40 minutes of battling with the apex predator, Gonzales and his buddies saw its massive dorsal fin break the waves, "and that's where we all lost it and got super ecstatic knowing it was a huge hammer," he said.
The waters off the gulf shores of the island are divided into several thin ribbons of alternating shallow and deeper water thanks to a series of sandbars that parallel the beach. When Gonzales first hooked the shark, it was swimming in deeper waters past the closest sandbar. Gonzales and his friends, Eli Mata, Joe Colombo and Alan Barron, were able to finagle it over the sandbar and into the shallows near shore, where they were finally able to haul it onto the beach for a measurement and some once-in-a-lifetime photos taken by Gonzales' fiancee, Scarlet Alcozer. Immediately afterward, Gonzales and his crew released the hammerhead back into the surf, where it quickly muscled its way back to deeper water - something Gonzales said was all the more gratifying to see.
"We were just even happier seeing it swim away due to that hammerheads are known to… fight till they die when you catch them," Gonzales said. "It was just an amazing day."
Joe Gonzles and his fiancee, Scarlet Alcocer pose for a photograph with a 14-foot, 5-inch great hammerhead shark that Gonzales landed while surf fishing on South Padre Island on Friday, Aug. 1, 2025. (Courtesy of Joe Gonzales via Facebook)
Great hammerheads are the largest species of hammerhead shark, and routinely average more than 500 pounds. They live for an average of 20 to 30 years, according to a fact sheet published by the Florida Museum. Hammerheads hunt other predators, including other shark species. But they also feed on tarpon, a variety of ray fish and other bottom dwellers, bony fish and crustaceans. In Texas, it's legal to hook a hammerhead, so long as it's more than 99 inches, or just over 8 feet long. But great hammerheads, along with their similarly shaped cousins, the scalloped and smooth hammerhead sharks, are considered critically endangered species.
Given the size and weight of Gonzales' hammerhead, it is likely a mature adult that could be more than 30 years old, by Boca Chica Beach Legends' estimation. The largest hammerhead ever caught in the United States was a 14-foot, 6-inch specimen weighing 1,280 pounds. That mammoth hammerhead was caught off the coast of Boca Grande, Florida, in May 2006, during what is known as the Florida tarpon run, an annual migration of tarpon fish.
