Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 818 is my conversation with Chip Michaelove of Outcast Sport Fishing in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and filmmaker Taylor Horton of Salt Creek Films. Chip is one of the most accomplished great white shark catch-and-release anglers on the East Coast, and Taylor is the guy who gets in the water to document it. We get into how Chip taught himself to catch white sharks, the leader systems and tackle it took, the conservation science he tags for, and what it feels like to wire the biggest fish you have ever hooked under a bridge with the current ripping.
Chip Michaelove runs Outcast Sport Fishing out of Hilton Head, South Carolina, and has become one of the most accomplished great white shark catch-and-release anglers on the East Coast. He taught himself the pursuit largely from scratch, dialing in the leader systems, tackle, and hooks needed to safely catch and release some of the largest predatory fish in the ocean. He works hand in hand with shark researchers, tagging the animals he catches, and is proud that he has never killed one.
Taylor Horton is a filmmaker behind Salt Creek Films who documents Chip's great white shark work, including getting in the water with hooked white sharks to capture footage most people never see. He and Chip do not always approach the situation the same way — Taylor is drawn to being in the water while many charter fishermen want to stay in the boat — and that tension is part of what makes their collaboration work.
Chip found a man online who described accidentally catching great whites while fishing for dogfish on commercial gear near Myrtle Beach and the Carolinas, and that set him down the path. From there it was trial and error — figuring out the right leader system, the right tackle, the right hook, and whether to chase a fish down or let it run. He describes it as completely different from any other fishing he has ever done in his life.
Chip teamed up with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and worked alongside researchers including Greg Skomal and John Chisholm connected to the state of Massachusetts. On the fish he catches, researchers can take blood samples and attach acoustic tags and satellite tags to the dorsal fin that report the shark's location in real time, turning each catch into a data point on where these animals travel.
Big. Chip describes catching white sharks in the 3,000-pound range, including a 16-foot fish landed on New Year's Eve roughly six years ago that was estimated around 3,000 pounds, and references another in the 3,400-pound class. When a fish that size decides to go — under the props, under the anchor line, or off the pulpit — it creates problems with tackle and boat handling that no other fish presents.
The satellite data has reshaped how Chip thinks about these animals. Tagged sharks travel enormous distances — from Nova Scotia down to South Florida and far out into the open Atlantic. He is convinced, based on the tracking, that there are great whites living well offshore in the middle of the Atlantic at sizes that would astonish people, though reaching them would take a major offshore expedition.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 818 with Chip Michaelove and Taylor Horton is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and wherever you get your podcasts. Press play in the audio player on this page to hear the full conversation.
Chip's Outcast Sport Fishing feed is one of my favorite follows. What he does is genuinely cool, and it is also genuinely hard — he figured out how to catch and release the largest, most powerful predator in the ocean without a roadmap. Pair that with Taylor, a filmmaker willing to get in the water with a hooked great white, and you have two people who see the same animal from completely different angles. I wanted to hear how they found each other and how they built this body of work. Press play to hear the whole story.
Chip's origin story is not a research grant or a TV deal — it is a guy on a website describing how he accidentally hooked white sharks while fishing dogfish on commercial gear in the Carolinas. From there Chip taught himself everything: the leader, the tackle, the hook, whether to chase or wait. He is candid that it is unlike any fishing he has ever done, and the early days nearly overwhelmed him. Listen to him walk through how he cracked the code.
There is a story in here about trying to wire the biggest shark they had ever hooked while making sure the fish and the boat went through the same span of a bridge with the current ripping. When an animal this size decides to run under the props or the anchor line, it presents problems no other fish does. Chip and I both came up learning fishing one accidental lesson at a time, and this is that, scaled to a creature the size of a bus. Hear the full account in the episode.
This is the part that elevates Chip's work above a thrill. By teaming with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and researchers like Greg Skomal and John Chisholm, every fish he catches becomes science — blood samples, acoustic tags, satellite tags on the dorsal fin reporting location in real time. He is proudest not of how many he has hooked but that he has never lost one. Listen to how the research partnership came together.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation
When Chip looks at the tracking, the picture is bigger than most people imagine — sharks running from Nova Scotia to South Florida and far out into the open Atlantic. He is careful to say he is not a conspiracy theorist, but he is convinced there are enormous white sharks living offshore in the middle of the ocean that almost no one will ever see. Hear why he thinks so, and what it would take to go find them.
I asked Taylor how you film something like Chip's reaction to his first great white — the emotion still in his voice years later — and how you make a viewer feel what that moment actually felt like. His answer is a window into the filmmaking craft behind this work, the choices that separate footage that informs from footage that moves you. Listen to that exchange in the episode.
The day after this one, what stuck with me was Chip's proudest achievement — not the size of the fish or the number of them, but the fact that he has never killed one. That is the whole ethic right there.
The other thread is how much of this came from curiosity and trial and error. A guy on a website, a lot of skunked days staring at water temperature on a computer, and a slow accumulation of hard-won knowledge that eventually turned into real science.
Listen to the whole thing. It is one of the wilder fishing conversations I have had on the show.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Chip Michaelove is the owner of Outcast Sport Fishing in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and one of the most accomplished great white shark catch-and-release anglers on the East Coast. He taught himself the pursuit through trial and error and now tags the sharks he catches in partnership with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and researchers including Greg Skomal and John Chisholm, contributing blood samples and satellite-tracking data while maintaining a record of never killing a fish. Taylor Horton is a filmmaker behind Salt Creek Films who documents Chip's work, including getting in the water with hooked great whites to capture footage few people will ever witness.
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