Shark bay delivers

After yesterday's sighting of the large shark (which I'm fairly certain was a white pointer) the incident played on my mind for the rest of the day and into the night. So much so that when I tried to sleep, mental images of the shark kept on reoccurring and ultimately made sleep hard. It might not have had the same impact if not for the stumbling around with the shark shield, in which precious moments ticked away as I mistakenly thought that it's battery was dead. Those few moments were intense to say the least and it had a lasting effect, even though all was resolved fairly quickly.

So at 1:00AM this morning I made the executive decision to give up on sleep and instead just prepare everything in readiness for an early morning launch. What better way to get it out of my head than to face the fear so to speak? With hours of darkness left to pass, I took my sweet time getting everything ready, including rigging up some wire traces that would have otherwise prevented me from being bust off 4 times in a row the day before. I also recharged the shark shield - I wasn't taking any chances today. By 3:30 AM I was pulling out of the driveway and cruising at a leisurely pace all the way, just after 4AM I'd arrived at Woody Head. 

Here to I was slow and measured, taking my time to rig the kayak and check and double check every single item fitted to the yak. This included replacing the rudder pin, which I figured might be due for failure. I didn't want any inadvertent issues whatsoever out there today. By 5:30 I was good to go, but with skies still relatively dark I sat out the next 30 minutes or so, trying ever so hard to shake the bad feeling I had about this trip. I kept telling myself it was just fatigue - I hadn't slept after all. I launched at 6AM and only 40 minutes or so later was traversing the area where I'd seen the beast yesterday. 

With shark shield switched on from the beginning I felt much more relaxed about everything once on the water. Even though light was poor and I couldn't see past the surface, the feeling of confidence quickly returned. However, a conversation I'd had with a friendly pro fisherman at the ramp prior to launch kept running through my mind. After telling him I'd seen a large shark the day before, the ensuing conversation went something like this:

Pro: 'Oh yes... there's been a big pointer getting around out there lately... and it's been stealing smaller fish and sharks that have been hooked up.'
me: 'Oh great!'

So I resolved to try to be quick in dealing with any sharks I might catch when handling them yak-side. My plan was to keep some distance between shark and kayak for a while in order to tire it out. And then - if table-worthy - haul it close and then gaff it aboard quickly. But after 2 hours of event-less yakking (with spurts of slow sailing in between) to the north I started to think that nothing would bite. The wind was much lighter than expected to, so when I found myself about 8km north of the launching zone and realising I might have to pedal all the way back, I turned around to head in. I pedalled for just over an hour towards the point when the first and only bite of the day came. And when it did, I knew instinctively that it was a shark. Despite this, I remained hopeful it was a mackerel. It wasn't.

Although it's weight wasn't huge, every time I got it close it would tear away with major force and continued to pull me around in circles. Eventually I caught a flash of colour and the unmistakable shape of a shark tail. But it was fighting a bit differently to everything else I'd hooked lately and it took a few moments to figure out why. Ah... of course... the Shark Shield was still switched on. No wonder. No matter either - this is what I wanted to happen - to keep it at a distance for a while and tire it out. Now using wire trace, I was confident it wouldn't bite me off mid fight.

When I'd decided enough was enough, I switched off the shield, hauled it in and drove a gaff through the upper side of it's mouth and lifted it aboard. Holding the gaff point proud, I used my leg to hold its body down as I then cut it's throat and tail. Then I threw a noose around its tail and placed it on the tramp to bleed. With that done, dinner sorted and episode 4 of War on Fish taken care of (look out for that on Wednesday), it was time to head back in.

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