The Shark Mission, Pt. 1

I'm a very indiscriminate angler. I'll fish for anything in any water with any gear. I'm perfectly happy catching two inch gambusia in a ditch, and I'm just as happy pulling on a fish almost as big as me.
It's impossible though not to be captivated by catching a fish as big or bigger than oneself, and well, if given the option between catching a 150lb something and a 150mm something, I'll probably choose the latter. There are exceptions. But, especially recently, I've had the insatiable urge to pull on something that could potentially kill me under the wrong circumstances. Something, big, gnarly, and a little bit scary. Noah has been on the same page, and two boat-less southern New England goons really have only one option: sharks and rays from the beach.
There's one really big issue with that. There is very little local information that would point us in the right direction without doing a little bit of driving or possibly hopping on a ferry. The Cape and the Vineyard are the known beach sharking places in New England. But we wanted to do something closer than that. We were both certainly willing to leave CT, but we didn't want to go that far. Our first attempt at sharks actually was on Cape Cod, and for all intents and purposes we learned very little from that other than that spider crabs are annoying and there were plenty of tiny dogfish in the wash at a certain beach at a certain time. We'd talked about sharking in Florida but never did, we had so many species to catch in daylight and couldn't just skip a night's sleep with the amount of driving we did each day. Our knowledge? Slim. We'd both seen small brown sharks in one specific area, I'd also caught two in 2012 or 2013... I can't remember which. But other than that we were lost. We put some of the pieces together from what guys have been doing on the Cape, but we couldn't seem to get out of our misguided ideas of what shark habitat is. Our first mission was an abject failure in every regard. We came exceptionally unprepared and left without anything. We really didn't learn, and that is what qualifies a failure to me. Not skunking.

We talked about going sharking again for weeks, and not only didn't go but managed to keep missing the obvious. We were way off, obviously of, so obviously that we'd not even once considered trying where we'd seen sharks every year for the last few years! I'm still baffled at how we were so off the mark. It took me running into a random snowbird local at a spot I've fished for a long time to for me to get my head out of my butt. One quick chat with someone who clearly had never been targeting sharks and the pieces started to come together. Two nights later Noah and I were out on the sandbar after sunset, ready to start catching cartilaginous fish. Neither of us were expecting to get a brown shark or sand tiger here on this night, we just wanted to put something on the beach. Neither of us had caught a large dogfish. Any skate or ray would also be appreciated. We waded out to into the breaking surf and sent a high-low rig baited with squid as far as possible, then walked back onto a dry part of the bar and set up.

It wasn't long for the first hit, and not much longer before Noah was pulling on something substantial. It was a dogfish, more precisely a dusky smooth hound. The fight was not bad. The fish did the typical thing once in shallow water and tangled the crap out of everything. But we were both immediately struck by the same though: Why, other than that tangling nonsense, are these fish so hated? Contrary to popular belief they aren't inedible either. In fact I have it on good authority that the are quite good eating with no more preparation than it takes many other popular species. And on light tackle from the beach? That's a good pull! We were fairly pleased with our little shark. It wasn't a toothy one, it wasn't going to be biting anyone's hand off while unhooking, but it was a shark.

Mustelus canis

It was now my turn on the rod. Thing is, I'm impatient. I couldn't sit and watch that rod tip waiting for it to bend... I wanted to walk around. With a headlamp on a perused the shallows, seeing tons of Atlantic silversides, banded and striped killifish, and some northern kingfish. Noah shouted that there'd been a take and I ran over. The rod was no longer pulsating but I picked it up, reeled down, and struck when I felt pressure. My fish was no shark, not even a bland toothless one, and that was immediately obvious. It ended up being a clearnose skate. Not a giant (Noah would actually hold the world record if he'd known what he had a couple years back), but a fair sized one, about the size of the first one I caught on the fly. Funny, this was my first skate not on the fly.

Raja eglanteria

Though we had a handful more definite takes that night, no more fish came to hand... er, no more fish came to hand that weren't caught by hand. Killifish are pretty easy to hand catch with a spotlight at night. We caught some HUGE striped killifish that I regret not photographing. Lightning loomed in the background and we soon left. I caught on 20 something inch striper on the fly before we left. That had to be done.

Funny as it may seem a dogfish and a skate had lifted our spirits a lot. We were much more confident all of a sudden. Noah and I had a pretty clear path now. We are going to do this thing... we're going to get a big shark on the beach. It's not a matter of if, it's when. 

As we were out there, Hurricane Dorian was aiming for the Bahamas. Being a meteorology nerd I'd been watching the storm closely and it had become clear it was going to be one for the books. With all the power of an F5 tornado but 40 miles across, Dorian slammed the Bahamas. The damage it has done is indescribable. As such, I feel it is necessary to forgo my typical post ending. There are a whole bunch of people that need our help, and simply sending "thoughts and prayers" through a social media post ain't going to cut it. If you can, please give financial aid. A good place to start is the fundraiser for Abaco Lodge (www.gofundme.com). There are other good relief efforts going on as well and they aren't hard to find. Flooding and tornadoes associated with Dorian have also effected the Carolinas, and though the damage done to the Bahamas far overshadows that we shouldn't be ignoring anybody who's lives have been turned upside-down by one of the most devastating and powerful hurricanes in history. Please do your part. I understand if you aren't in a position too, it hurts that I can't do more than I'm presently able to. 

 Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, Elizabeth, and Christopher, for keeping this blog going.