Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
A lot of folks are surprised to hear that sharks can be caught on artificial lures and/or flies made up of nothing more than feathers or fur without an assist from the smell or taste of any type of natural bait. So last week, when one of my clients brought aboard a fly rod with the hopes of hooking a cooperative shark, I figured he had a pretty good shot of making it happen. Unfortunately, when we got out there and I saw the flies he brought, my optimism waned as I just knew they were all too small for the job. But with sharks swimming around the boat and a client who wanted to hook one on a fly I had to do something, so I started rummaging through my tackle drawers looking for anything I could rig that might come close to resembling a fly that would fool a shark. I didn’t exactly end up with what anyone would consider to be a beautifully tied fly, but the small skirts on a hook and leader were close enough to do the job – we had our shark fly!
I remember a similar situation many years ago when we had big bluefish chummed up around the boat, giving my clients the opportunity to have a ball hooking choppers on surface poppers cast on light spinning tackle. Unfortunately, partway through the day, all the poppers we had were either obliterated or lost. Needing something (anything) we could cast that would float on the surface and somewhat resemble a potential meal to the ravenous fish, I cut a length of yellow polypropylene rope into a 6-inch length, tied both ends from fraying, ran a leader through the middle of it and with a hook at one end we caught fish after fish on the creation until the end of the day!
Such stories probably jog the memories of many folks who recall being out on their boat and needing to get something done, but not having exactly what they needed for the job, ended up “making do” by jury-rigging something-somehow. Whether trying lift a fish out of the water without a net, getting a motor to start, an anchor to hold, opening a can of soup or hooking a fish on an artificial “something”, when you’re out on a boat with limited resources to work with, you sometimes have to think on your feet and get creative to make things go in your favor.
On one occasion I found myself out on the water without a landing net of any kind. Of course, like everyone else, I have my share of days where not having a net isn’t a problem because weren’t catching much anyway - but this wasn’t one of those days! Anticipating decent action with tautog, I knew we’d need something to help bring the bigger fish into the boat without having them straighten or flip off the small hooks. While I couldn’t produce a net, I devised a quick plan to build a mini gaff by taping a 9/0 hook to the end of a boat rod. The creation wasn’t pretty, but it worked amazingly well and we didn’t lose a single keeper-size fish that day.
Last season we were 2-hours into a 3-hour battle with a big thresher shark when the reel froze up. With no way to crank or fix the reel, the big fish strung out about 200-yards from the boat, I knew we had to get it on a different reel. So we stripped a bunch of line off another rod and reel and started backing down on the fish to intentionally put enough slack in the line so that we could cut the line and quickly tie it to the replacement rod. Amazingly, the knot held and an hour later we had the leader in hand and tagged the shark.
A bunch of years ago, we were tuna fishing with some pretty light tackle when a bigger than expected tuna latched on to us and started screaming off in one direction while a second fish was pulling line off another. The combination of light tackle, big fish and no way to give chase meant that very soon the angler fighting the big tuna would be looking at an empty spool. We couldn’t let that happen, so I grabbed a rod that had heavier test line and snapped it to the reel connected to the fish and promptly told the angler to throw his rod into the water and resume the battle on the second rod. He wasn’t so keen on pitching my $500 rod and reel in the water (neither was I), but he did as he was told and a half hour later we got the original rod back on the boat which he then used to finish the fight and land the tuna.
While running a friend’s boat from here to Norfolk, VA, we realized that the stuffing box for the starboard engine was leaking and the spinning propeller shaft was slinging saltwater all over the engine room. The incoming water wasn’t so bad that we were in danger of sinking but we weren’t so keen on it being thrown all over the engine and wiring below the deck. Looking for a way to redirect the water down into the bilge, we found it in the form of a laminated nautical chart which we fashioned into a shroud that we zip-tied into place over the shaft. It worked so well that we left it on the boat for the remainder of the trip, all the way to south Florida.
No matter how much we think we’re prepared before we leave the dock, as fishermen and boaters, we are forever finding ourselves lacking something we need, and often the solution is as simple, but not always so obvious. Bottom fishermen know that if they run out of 4-ounce sinkers they can get by if they put a pair of 2-ouncers on the line. If they run out of leader material they can make-do by using line off a heavier rod, or if they’re fishing with soft plastic baits and run out of jig-heads they can make one by putting a couple split-shots or a small egg weight on the line close to a bare hook.
The key to it all is not to give up. Don’t assume that your day is ruined just because things aren’t going exactly as planned. We once had a reel handle break while we were fighting a fish. I didn’t have a replacement handle, so the best thing I could do is grab one off a different rod that we didn’t need to use that day. The problem was the two reels were from different manufacturers and the handle didn’t fit until I grabbed a file out and quickly shaved the mounting hole into the proper shape. When we finally got the handle on the broken reel, we realized that the slightly different design handle was a vast improvement over the original part - and the reel never worked better! It’s been six years and we’re still fishing with that reel and it still has it’s mis-matched handle.
Sometimes what seems like a major problem actually turns out to be an opportunity to make things better than they were – so don’t give up!
Capt. Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat, “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
