Montauk Pioneer

The setting sunlight highlights the weathered look of this veteran seaman. The eighty-plus years have taken a toll around his restored fishing boat, he smiles and jokes of days long gone. As he sits on his boat docked at the Star Island Marina in Montauk, Frank Mundus is still at it. He is still chasing the idea of catching the next great white. The man who inspired a charachter in the movie Jaws is once again living on the Cricket II as he did back in 1951 when he first arrived in Montauk with his wife and first daughter. "I'd leave [my family] at the dock when I'd go out in the morning," says Frank of his first days living on the Cricket II. "Finally I rented a small house for a hundred dollars a month." After three great years in 1988, 1989 and 1990, Frank sold everything and moved out of Montauk. Now after living in Hawaii for fifteen years, Mundus has returned to the South Shore these last three years to get back into the game.

He has partnered with Sean Paxton and Brooks Paxton II to restore the Cricket II. The trio wants to take out small parties to fish and to film on their beloved boat. They are planning to launch a TV fishing show featuring Frank to be filmed on the Cricket II at sea off Montauk.

The boat has a nice story to it. In 1946 Frank went down to the Virginia side of the Chesapeake Bay to pick up his new, custom-made fishing boat, Cricket II, driving a $25 Model A Ford that was twenty-something years old. When he paid $10,000 for the custom-made Cricket, Frank had a dilemma, what to do with the car. "I put the car in the well of the boat and motored the boat to Jersey," he says proudly. "Hell, the car cost $25, so I had to take it with me. When I got to Jersey I had a charter so I didn't have time to take the car off the boat, so I just took the group out with the car on board. What a mess with the car and all the mackerel we caught that day."

When asked about some unusual groups he had taken out Frank recalls a "bunch of nuns back in the fifties for mackerel." But Frank's legend was built on the landing of the largest great white sharks with rod and reel, (over 3,500-pounds) and the largest overall great white shark caught, 4,500-pounds, that someone caught with a harpoon and barrels, just like the one in the film Jaws.

The funny thing is, the story of Jaws mirrors the catching of the 4,500-pounds great white because Frank told Peter Benchley, the author of the book that Jaws was based on, every detail of the catch. He never received a dime but Frank would like to thank Roy Scheider, the star of the movie, for acknowledging that Frank Mundus was the real Quint, recently in a TV interview.

"All I ever wanted was one word- Thanks- I never got it." He lamented but then he smiled, and the smile grew larger. He is friendlier these days because, "[He] no longer drinks two bottles of bourbon a day. That tended to bend my attitude."

Frank told stories from 1961, after a tuna contest, he filled his boat with discarded 350-pound tunas left at the dock after the tournament. "No sushi back then, I used it for shark bait." That thought had him chuckling. Now sometimes that same tuna is worth $10 a pound.

When asked about Montauk, what had changed and what has remained the same, his answer was two fold: "When I came here in 1951 there were 3 motels, now there are over 100. But the docks, the boats, and the fishermen, that will never change. The talk at the dock, that will never change either."

Then Sean and Brooks Paxton ushered a small boy onto the boat to meet Frank. Mundus signed the boy's copy of his book, Fifty Years A Hooker, posed for a few pictures and then made the boy smile and laugh and then Frank sat back in his chair and looked out at the open sea as he always has and always will.

By dialing 941-416-5073 one can still book Frank Mundus and his restored Cricket II for a day of fishing adventure off Montauk.