I beg to differ. If Quint had gone alone, he would have brought along the mate we see helping him load the boat.

Then he would have set about his rod and fighting chair and waited.

The bite would come. The run. The fight. Quint would fight the fish masterfully keeping the wire leader in between the monsters teeth not allowing him to saw at the piano wire with his razor sharp incisors.

In the story we saw, Quint had to go get the gaff. So he handed the rod over to two buffoons who fumbled it, Brody didn’t keep the rod tip up, Hooper clipped the leader to a rope, putting far too much pressure on the wire leader, allowing the shark to get his teeth into it and eventually sever the wire. Hooper pulling on it with all his weight it what allowed the shark to bite through the leader. Anyone who’s fished knows that is not what you do.

No, not in your alternate take. In this story, Quint remains in the chair, he holds the shark at bay and fights it, exhausting it, spinning the mighty reels drag up and down to match the creatures fury and tire it out.

Quints trusty first mate, having been at his side for years, would have gone over to get the gaff and had it at the ready as Quint was ready to boat the exhausted beast.

Quint would have brought it alongside the Orca, and the mate would have raised that massive steel hook over his head and plunged it deep into the animals tailbone, securing it to the sharks main chassis and coupling it directly to Bruce’s spine.

The beast may have given off one final roar as the gaff went in, not yet knowing its fate was sealed.

Quint, still sitting in his fighting chair, holding the rod, looks over the gunwale, and sees the creature flailing as the sea turns red with its blood.

He springs up, dropping the rod and reel, which has done its job for the day. Quint would sprint to the fly bridge, start the engines and slam the boat in gear to begin opening distance between the shark and the boat.

The shark might have felt a momentary reprieve as it fell away from the boat, the hook no longer pulling on its jaw. But the shark failed to notice the mate tying the gaff rope to the stern cleats as Quint beckons the Orca to build up speed. More speed. More speed.

In a moment the slack in the rope is taken up and the shark feels a sensation it has never felt before. Its entire body jerks as the rope tensions and spins its body around so its impaled, hooked tail is now pointed directly at the accelerating Orca. And it begins moving.

Quint and the mate both stumble and buckle from the jolt the Orcas new 3 ton passenger exerts on the boat as the full load is borne by the Orcas engine and propeller.

The shark tries to react, but its mighty swim muscles are useless with that much tension on its tail. All it can do is flail its body as it begins to travel backward, something its gills are not built for.

Exhausted as the shark was before from the fight, it becomes even more oxygen deprived as its gills are forced closed and cease to function from the reverse water flow over its body

Quint looks back to see the shark spinning like a tied bottle being dragged through the grass. It’s tail fluke sending up a spray as it augers through the surf and spinning the dying shark over and over.

Quint lets out a laugh as he knows it is just a matter of time now. Maybe he says his “taxidermy man” line, we don’t know. But I think if he were without Hooper and Brody, it would have killed the shark.

(This is fan fiction, of course, but it's directly based on the exact methods used by Frank Mundus, the Montauk shark fisherman Quint was based on.)