Montauk’s ‘Monster Man’ Dies
Frank Mundus, shark-fishing pioneer,
hyped a sport with ‘the twist of a woyd’
 John Ebel
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(9/18/2008) Montauk’s Monster Man, Capt. Frank Mundus, a shark-fishing legend who was credited with having been the inspiration for Quint, the cantankerous charter captain in “Jaws,” died on Sept 10 at the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu during heart surgery. He was 82.
Captain Mundus became ill shortly after returning home on the island of Hawaii. He had spent much of the summer in Montauk attending shark tournaments and signing copies of his books, “Monster Man” and “Fifty Years a Hooker.” He was also promoting the use of circle hooks, a type of fishing hook that allows fishermen to release sharks unharmed, which suggested a green turnaround for a man with a reputation — not entirely deserved, friends and family said this week — for creating mayhem offshore.
Captain Mundus retired as a full-time charter captain in 1997 and underwent heart bypass surgery a year later. Nevertheless, he continued to guide fishermen offshore since then, often aboard the Cricket II, the 42-foot boat on which he revolutionized the Montauk charter business beginning in 1951. Captain Mundus spent the night of Sept. 5, his last in Montauk, sleeping aboard the Cricket, according to Rob Osinski, a former mate.
The name Cricket came from Captain Mundus’s own nickname, which in turn derived from his sloping forehead and Roman nose that friends said made him look like Jiminy Cricket of Disney’s movie “Pinocchio.” There is talk of bringing the Cricket ashore somewhere in Montauk Harbor as a memorial to the Monster Man.
Frank Mundus was born on Dec. 23, 1925, a son of Anthony Mundus and the former Christine Brug in Long Branch, N.J. He was raised in Brooklyn and Point Pleasant, N.J. He first went to sea on a commercial dragger, work he returned to along with dock building, and crewing on tugboats, during lean years before his Montauk charter business took off.
Pat Mundus, one of Captain Mundus’s three daughters, said her father proved that necessity is the mother of invention.
“The best part of his life was early in Montauk,” she said. “He was marketing himself years before people thought that way. We were broke, and he was throwing fish on the dock,” albeit in a dramatic fashion, “to put food on our table, not because he was bloodthirsty.”
Ms. Mundus said she hoped posterity would not remember her father as the character Quint.
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 Russell Drumm
The Monster Man in Montauk Harbor in the early 1980s with a just-landed shark, and the cooler that held buckets of “monster mash” chum in the background. |
My father was a damn good hunter with a strong, intuitive sense of shark behavior,” Ms. Mundus said. “There was no quest for revenge against evil. He was resentful because he didn’t think people really understood that.”
When Frank Mundus arrived in Montauk, blue-collar anglers were fishing for bottom species to take home to eat. At the same time, well-heeled fishermen, including Ernest Hemingway, Zane Gray, and Kip Farrington, hunted for big game like swordfish, marlin, and giant tuna.
Captain Mundus changed the dockside demographics in the 1950s and ’60s by introducing the blue-collar fishermen to sharks. Monster fishing was born, something few of his fellow charter captains appreciated at the time.
When interviewed for “In the Slick of the Cricket,” a book about his shark-fishing career, Captain Mundus explained how he had invented the shark fishing craze.
“Had the day off, lookin’ for a party at the dock. You couldn’t say shark fishin’ — we needed a fancy name. Three idiots come walkin’ down the dock, and I tell ’em we’re goin’ monster fishin’.”
“They said, okay, like that. They was shark fishin’ and didn’t know it. It worked. The only thing we caught was sharks. The next time, they said, ‘Let’s go shark fishin.’ We’d get back and cut up the steaks, because back then these guys came out to Montauk for meat.”
“I was chummin’ people with the twist of a woyd, from sport fishin’ to monster fishin’. ”
As the years went by, the Mundus myth grew with the help of the shark fisherman’s own brand of humor, his turned-down Australian bush hat, shark-tooth necklace, and the big toes of each of his feet painted red and green for port and starboard.
His scarred and withered forearm, which people assumed was the result of a shark bite, was actually from a roller-skating accident when he was a boy, although he didn’t work to correct the darker impression.
The shark-fishing craze began when he realized how much fun one group of bluefish anglers had when a mako shark showed up in Cricket’s slick. It continued through the frenzy that followed the release of the movie “Jaws” and reached a high point with Captain Mundus’s landing in 1986 of a 3,427-pound white shark with the help of Donny Braddick, a fellow charterman who angled the fish.
There were earlier giants, several great white sharks in the thousand-pound class during the early 1960s, and a massive white estimated to weigh over 4,000 pounds that he harpooned in 1964. The head mount of that shark still hangs in the bar at Salivar’s in Montauk.
There is little question that Frank Mundus was the inspiration for Quint in Peter Benchley’s book “Jaws” and in Steven Spielberg’s ensuing blockbuster. Mr. Benchley had fished with Captain Mundus a number of times. According to John Ebel, a former mate on the Cricket, Mr. Benchley privately admitted the Mundus-Quint connection, although he was wary of doing so publicly, probably for legal reasons, Mr. Ebel said.
Captain Mundus expressed displeasure with both the book and movie because he was not credited, but more important because “Jaws” spilled thousands of amateur fishermen onto the sea in an all-out and disrespectful attack on sharks. He summed up his feelings in true Mundus fashion in 1997:
“Nothin’ on this earth is increasin’. There ain’t as many fish, but there ain’t as many of a lot of things, like pheasants or buffaloes. Even the brontosauruses that used to hang out on the front lawn got scarce after I quit drinkin’. The only thing there’s more of is humans, and some of them ain’t human.”
Captain Mundus is survived by his wife, the former Jeanette Hughes of Hawaii, and his sister, Christine Mundus Zenchak of Las Vegas. He also leaves his ex-wife and the mother of his children, Janet Mundus of East Hampton, as well as his daughters, Pat Mundus of Greenport, Barbara Crowley of Billerica, Mass., and Tammy Greene of East Hampton. He also leaves five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
“There are still the cranky naysayers, but the fishing community of Montauk owes that man an enormous debt,” Mr. Ebel said on Monday. “We’re seeing the passing of a giant. I realize how privileged I was to work as his mate. I’ve never seen a tougher man, always calm in a pinch.”
“When a big fish came up to the boat, a serenity would come over him.”