Shark fishing is pretty much the shortest distance between the less-than-dedicated angler and a bragging-size summer catch. The sport's allure isn't in applying hard-earned experience or the thrill of the hunt or even, in most cases, in a particular culinary fetish. The sport's allure is in besting a creature that popular culture assures us would eat us if given half a chance.Granted, it can be tough to drag a living 250-pound mass of muscle, cartilage and teeth boatside (and even tougher to get it into the boat, should somebody be so stupid), if the mass doesn't wish it. But, scaling the fishing equipment downward accordingly, finding and then boating a 25-pound snook or redfish is infinitely more difficult.
I'm not saying that fighting a shark can't be hell on both the heart and the arms. I am saying, however, that any idiot in the world can locate and hook one.
Beyond the obvious — rods, reels, tackle, boat (and you can actually do without the boat) — you need only four things to put a shark at the other end of your line: night, lots of dead bloody somethings, lots of beer, and at least one person who has never been shark fishing.
You need night because sharks feed the most actively from sunset through the wee hours. You need dead bloody somethings because sharks are opportunistic predators possessed of both uncanny sensory apparatus and the inability to pass up an easy meal; and you need lots because most aren't going on your hook, but rather into the water in aromatic liquid chunks. You need lots of beer because, while sharks can reportedly detect one part blood in one million parts water, they might be in Clearwater when they detect the blood you're tossing overboard near Bradenton. Well, not really, but it could take a bit, that's all.
And you need a rookie because what this whole rigmarole is really about is the look that forms on that person's face the first time a shark of any real size comes up out of the depths.
That is, at the core of it, why the three of us are motoring out through the pass at Casey Key and into an unexpectedly ornery Gulf aboard Joey G's 26-foot cabin-cruiser — because Joey P's never been shark fishing before. Sure, Joey G and I would've put in even if nobody else wanted to go. And we probably would catch more fish that way simply because we always do when there's nobody else around to witness it. But it'll be more than worth it to see what Joey P does when the first big, toothy critter swims into the light.
We clear the pass, shooting quotes from Jaws back and forth. The occasionally breaking six-foot swells give us the slightest pause; so do the constant false dusks caused by myriad storm clouds scuttling between the sea and the sun, goaded toward shore by the stiffening wind. But we're only going a couple of miles out. Besides, the breeze usually drops a few hours after dark.
"We can always swim back," jokes Joey P.
Maybe two miles from the beach, the GPS satellites inform us that we're over a shallow wreck. The fish finder shows craggy bottom and a suspended wash of static that usually means baitfish. Up in the tower, Joey G suggests we drop anchor.
So we winch it down, feel it catch, and go about scurrying the boat's wonderfully open, fisherman-friendly stern. Rigging rods. Stowing gear.
Cutting bait.
Our bloody dead somethings are a couple of sizable bonito. Bonito, or li'l tunny, is the smallest, oiliest, bloodiest member of the tuna family. They're the tuna no human being would ever want to eat (though almost every human being who's ever eaten a can of tuna that cost less than 75 cents has probably eaten some), but they make top-notch shark bait. The heads, guts and as much organic liquid as we can salvage go into a perforated bucket, which goes over the side. Big strips of tough, bloody meat go on big hooks, which also go over the side.
Don't wear nice clothes shark fishing, by the way.
The weather worsens. We miss the sunset, due to its being staged behind a massive offshore thunderstorm due west of our position. The boat's bow dips low enough in some troughs that waves break over it. Despite good conversation and cold beer, the mood darkens with the sky.
The portside rig's reel abruptly screams, line flying off. Joey G grabs the rod and rears back. Something man-size jumps twice several hundred yards off the stern, then the line goes slack. Joey G reels to find the round wire clasp that held the hook has been pulled straight.
Over the next couple of hours, we haul in one blacktip shark no larger than a forearm after another, that first lost fish goes from being a spinner shark, to a tarpon, to a kingfish, back to some kind of shark.
Eventually, the jarring roll of the now consistently breaking waves becomes too much. Joey G and I didn't get to see that look on Joey P's face, but hell, it was fun. Anyway, things are turning dangerous. There's lightning everywhere.
We bring in the lines, the chum bucket. Joey steps inside the cockpit and flips the key.
The engine coughs drily, sputters, and is silent.
It stays that way.
Over the next couple of hours, gas lines are examined. Throttles and chokes are fucked with. An anchor line is removed, with great effort, from around one of the engine's props. Batteries are unhooked, tested, hooked back up in parallel, in series, solo.
Eventually, it becomes obvious that we aren't going anywhere under our own power. The combination of open engine compartments and bonito blood makes the aft deck looks like an auto body shop where somebody stabbed a hemophiliac. A smelly hemophiliac.
It is decided that we'll have to rough it out here overnight, and call for a tow in the morning.
"Well, before we decide that we're gonna be stuck out here all night, why don't we try the radio?"
"I tried the radio. There's no one still out here."
"There's no one still out here?"
"Take a look around, man. Why would anybody be out in this?"
Seriously.
They'd have to be idiots.
Contact Scott Harrell at 813-739-4856, or at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2004.
