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The docks were the place to be Saturday night as an overflow crowd marveled at the monsters and the midgets.

The warm-up to the evening came from Mike Echols, angling aboard the Special K, who hauled in a 64.4-pound Warsaw grouper after fighting it for a half-hour.

“It was like pulling in a Volkswagen,” the first-time rodeo fisherman said.

But if the grouper was a Volkswagen, then Adlee Bruner of Bruce landed a Mack truck. Bruner hauled in the heaviest fish the Destin Fishing Rodeo has seen in the past 10 years. The 11-foot mako shark first weighed in at 844.4 pounds. After being gutted, the fish tipped the scales at 638 pounds, shattering an earlier shark division record of 338 pounds.

“It was a hard fight,” the angler said of the 35-minute battle with the beast.

The shark was a stunning contrast to Savannah Eidson’s earlier catch. The 10-year-old Atlanta, Ga., resident was dangling her estimated .3-pound pinfish in the water to keep it alive.

She caught the tiny fish, which she named “Mr. Limpet,” off the docks after she lost the big one when her mother, Mary Jo, grabbed the rod to help. Any kid with a catch is a winner and after getting her pole and certificate, her father, Rick, set the fish free.

“I think we’re gonna tag it, too,” he laughed.

Check out Wednesday’s edition of The Destin Log for much more on the record-breaking shark.

— William Hatfield

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