Time is Running Out
Fishing Muscles
After a twelve-minute walk from a sandy parking lot, I stare at the Atlantic and take in the intoxicating smell of saltwater, seaweed, and Beach Rose.
A bent fishing rod plays peekaboo over the sandy horizon, so I know something is up. Typically, if someone is fishing solo, I leave them alone, especially on a deserted beach, but this was different. Running over, they greet me with smiles and I ask,
“Blues? Striper?”
“Shark.”
“Shark?” I reply.
“Yep.”
Forty minutes later, its sassy tail is slapping the cresting surf. A shark, indeed. Gloves on, he grabs the 300-pound leader and pulls in sync with the ebbing surf, a fight against moon and beast.
Inspired.
Next stop: tackle shop.
My equipment is a little light for the task: a forty-pound braided line and a lighter-duty eight-foot rod. Worth a try.
I buy pre-made shark rigs, the heaviest pyramid weight my set-up will tolerate (4 oz), fish-finder, and bait: mackerel and eels.
Nibbles. Then the reel is ripping, drag running, a fantastic sound, rivaled only by a deer’s audible crash into a brittle thicket after a broadside shot. It's a dogfish, my first shark.
Days later. Two lines baited in a slack tide facing south in the 72-degree waters of southern Cape Cod. Mackerel chunks dangling and disintegrating in the warm current like cumulous clouds of the inshore depths.
Father John Misty plays on my phone, and I’m creating my own melodies and lyrics inspired by the pursuit at hand and FJM's melancholic trajectory.
My casting finger (right index) is cut raw by the line and saltwater; now, a line-width slice a quarter of the way through my finger reminds me of one sloppy cast. I tape it.
The song I’m writing in my head is coming together:
I’m the hook; you’re the bait; here comes our catch.
Maybe I’ve been at it too long. Maybe I need to change the music.
One of the rods bends, and the true ripping begins. There is no stopping it, only slowing it.
Tighten the drag. Don’t break the line.
A battle like no other, a delicate, wild dance. It's a half-hour battle that ends when I grab the tail, drag it out of the surf, and try not to dislocate my shoulder.
I usually don’t need to battle fish long enough to call upon an inner focus, a focus traditionally reserved for the hard hunts where the world is kicked out of my head like an annoying housefly.
This time it's different.
Don’t screw up.
Over-tighten the drag or let the line slack, you’ll lose it.
Brown shark. My muscles are sore the next day—new muscles.
Fishing muscles.
I expected to fish for scup, bluefish, and stripers, but I discovered shark fishing. Reflecting on this, I revisit my desire to get after these experiences.
Gear…family…work…timing. Like the majority of my hunting and fishing experiences, these considerations threaten to evolve into excuses not to go or not to figure it out.
After I watched that stranger reel in a shark, I walked back to my truck, mumbling, “What are you waiting for?”
Go get the gear and get fishing. Figure it out. Ask questions.
In this case, shark fishing reminded me that you can’t predict what you’ll find when you get out there. It’s easy to intellectualize and add “shark fishing” to my future list of things to try. In that case, I’d be sitting here in front of a computer screen with a slightly longer list of new adventures to figure out and less time to do them.
As an unseasonably cold and drizzly August lingers out the window, I use it as an excuse to stay inside and ruminate, theorize, overthink, and write. New ridges to scout are visible out the window.
And I mutter to myself, Time is limited. Get after it.
Yes! Fall and spring are such great times for fishing, too; they are often the most productive (for me, at least 🙂).
Hooking a shark from the surf is absolutely one of the most exhilarating things you can do with your hands wrapped around a rod!