The adventures of a Florida boy (part 2)
In the 1960s, kids ran as far and wild as their imaginations would take them.
ONE OF AN OCCASIONAL SERIES: My boyhood was spent in Florida in the 1960s on an island called Coquina Key. My parents’ waterfront home overlooked a large expanse of Tampa Bay. Back then, parts of the island were undeveloped, which left plenty of room for climbing trees, digging forts in the sand, and swimming in shark-infested waters (though we didn’t give the latter much thought).
This is part 2 of a random and mostly lighthearted series that I might eventually combine into a memoir. I’m telling these stories to the best of my recollection and changing names and physical descriptions just because it seems like the right thing to do.
Part 2: The Shark
One of the advantages of growing up on the water was being just a few steps away from a place to go fishing. When I turned 12, I began mowing lawns all around the island and made quite a bit of money for a kid my age. I spent most of it on fishing equipment.
I had several rigs: huge, medium-sized and small—and a tackle box stuffed with every imaginable weight, hook, bobber and lure.
Snook were the fish that everyone was after back then (and maybe still are). Snook that weigh between 5 and 15 pounds rank among the most delicious saltwater fish you will ever eat. But they are also elusive. Nowadays, there are all kinds of catch and size limits regarding snook. But back in the late 1960s, there were few regulations. For me, it didn’t matter because I couldn’t seem to catch one anyway.
During the school year, I liked to do my homework on our screened porch that overlooked Tampa Bay. While working on my homework, I also fished. After setting out my books, papers and pencils on our wrought-iron table, I brought out my smallest and largest rigs. I first chose the small one, attached a tiny piece of hotdog to the hook, and cast a line off the seawall. In just a few seconds I reeled in a hand-sized pinfish, a favorite bait of fishermen in southern waters. Next I hooked the pinfish to my larger rig, climbed down an extension ladder into knee-deep water at the base of the 6-foot seawall, waded out to my waist, and cast the pinfish as far as I could into the deeper channel. Then I waded back, climbed back up the ladder, and slid the butt-end of the pole into our chain-link fence.
After that, I dried off a bit and sat inside my porch, glancing up at the pole every minute or so to see if there was any action.
About twenty minutes later, I saw the thick pole bend crazily. Holy smokes! I had something BIG! Surely it was the snook of all snooks.
I hustled into my backyard, grabbed the pole, and gave it a big yank. At the same moment, I saw a huge fish break the surface way out in the channel. It looked to be about five feet long. The most enormous snook ever!
SNOOK! SNOOK!!! I screamed. But there was no one to hear. My stepdad was still at work and my mom was inside watching TV and smoking cigarettes. There were no neighbors around either. It was as silent as a scene in a post-apocalyptic movie.
The fish had almost stripped my reel, but I had expensive 30-pound test on this rig, which could handle a lot of tension. So I tightened the drag and began to pump and reel. It felt like I was hauling in a boulder.
Several times I retrieved about 100 feet of line only to have the fish strip it back out. I wondered if this beast was too large and powerful for even my best rig. Anyone who has fished a lot knows there are few things worse than having your line snap before you even get a look at what was on the other end. You then spent the next several days wondering what it was.
I finally wrestled the fish close enough to get a better look. It was indeed large, which should have excited me. But I realized it was larger than even a world-record snook.
It was a shark—at least five feet long and probably sixty pounds. Since there was a sand bar beyond the channel, it was most likely a sand shark.
SHARK! SHARK!!! I yelled, hoping this might attract some attention and lure someone out to witness my epic battle. But the apocalypse had apparently wiped everyone out.
After a thirty-minute fight, I tired the shark enough to bring him to the bottom of the seawall. But now what? I wasn’t going to go down and get in the knee-deep water with him, but I also didn’t have a large-enough net to scoop him up. My only option was to muscle him up over the top of the seawall.
I leaned forward until the tip of the rod was only a couple of feet from the shark and then pulled back with all my strength. The shark rose out of the water until his head peeked just above the seawall, but he thrashed like a maniac and zipped enough line off the reel to drop back into the water. After that, I had another ten-minute fight just to get him back to the seawall.
My second effort was more successful. I got half his body over the seawall and almost had him. But he continued to thrash, resembling the great white shark about to devour Quint in the movie Jaws (which would hit the big screen seven years later).
The shark fell back into the water again, but now he was too tired to fight. I gave it one final heave and got almost three fourths of his body onto dry land. But just when it appeared that I had him, the line snapped. The shark hung there a moment between land and sea, and then slipped back into the water. I watched him swim slowly away until he disappeared into the darkness of the channel.
In retrospect, I’m glad the shark escaped. If I had caught him, I would have probably put him in a wheelbarrow and showed him off around the neighborhood before tossing his dead body into the bay to be devoured by all manner of creatures. This would have been an ignominious end for such a grand fish.
More than fifty years after my epic battle, I still wish the shark well. I hope he survived the rigors of our encounter to live another day. They say that sand sharks can live as long as forty years.
Whatever the result, he gave me one heck of a battle that I’ll never forget.
I'm glad he got away in the end!
"More than fifty years after my epic battle, I still wish the shark well." This is such an awesome quote!