February 8, 2012.
After recently playing Beach Bocce', watching the Superbowl and random evenings of Dominoes I've realized that I’m still pretty competitive. So we decided to create a game of our own.
We call it “Messin' with sharks”. For some reason the anchorage here at Double Breasted Cay is shark central. They showed up as soon as we dropped the anchor.
At any given moment during the day we can spot at least one shark meandering through the anchorage. Whenever a dinghy motor is started up they start to show up in numbers.
When we got back from hunting today we had a half dozen sharks circling the boat before we were even out of the dink. Usually as I clean the lobsters I snap their tail from their torso. If they're 3 pounds or smaller I toss the heads overboard. In every other anchorage it might be an hour before a Nurse shark
or big ray will come through and devour the lobster “heads”. Here at Double Breasted Cay the sinking heads barely get the chance to hit the bottom before being scooped up.
Since we grabbed a very nice Hogfish today we decided develop our new game. As I cleaned the Hog his blood was being washed down the scuppers into the water.
The sharks were circling frenetically looking for the source of the blood. After the fillets were removed I put a line through his mouth and gill and attached the bitter end to a deck cleat. 
I tossed him into the water fully expecting one of the 5 or 6 foot long Sandbar Sharks to jump the Hog as quickly as they could.
Instead a 9 foot Nurse Shark came up from below and sucked the Hog entirely into its mouth. And swam off, or at least attempted to. The line went tight and the shark went a little bit nuts. I expected the 3/8ths line to be bitten off but it wasn't as the shark immediately
got tangled around our anchor chain. Ooops. We hadn't envisioned this when we planned the game.
The photo ops we were hoping for were there but the game turned out to be a lot more exciting than we had expected. Its hard to snap pictures when you're screaming. The shark ripped the fish free from the line and swam away to digest her prize. We'll refine the game and give it another whirl in the future.
5 comments:
Dude, you're making me not want to cruise. All those sharks...
I suppose they aren't as attracted to zucchini, or tofu scraps, so we might not have to worry so much.
Every year is different. Last year I only saw 6 or so all year. Double Breasted cay just has an overabundance for now. Take the zucchini and tofu, grind it into a paste and smear it all over your body before entering the water. Nothing carnivourous will even give you a second look.....
I'll wear the pink thong, so no one will give me a second look above the water either.
We can't wait to see those pictures on your blog....
Some posts are just mean't to be commented on, this is 1. Thank you for an excellent read, so tough to locate nowadays.
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