An Election Day Fishing Trip, 2016

After voting last week, the plan for today was to go to Fort Desoto, laze away the day on the beach, fish a bit, and have a beach picnic. So I packed the truck, while Renita made a lunch and after stopping for bait we made it to our favorite spot.

I quickly baited up, with a piece of frozen shrimp and made a cast. The tide was going out and just as quickly my bait weeded up. Moving down the beach I cast another bait when a man walked up and asked me how the fishing was. I told him I had just cast out and that’s when the fish hit!

I had a pretty good suspicion it was either a shark or a sting ray but as I fought the fish in it continued to make several good runs and sure enough I saw the shark’s dorsal fin break the surface. It was a bonnethead shark, which is a type of hammerhead, and it was a big one at that, (a large adult bonnet head is three to four feet)!

Bonnetheads, which are a very common shark, are good to eat and so I normally would have kept this one. However, it was just my second cast and I didn’t want to bother with keeping it fresh for the whole afternoon. Besides you can only keep one shark a day.

Surely I would catch another so I released the fish. and cast back out to the same spot. Time passed and more time and no more bites. A willet feed in front of us and I tried the old trick of eating lunch. Now that usually brings a bite, but nothing happened.

Sanderlings played in the surf, a great snowy egret tried to steal some food from some other fisherman, and jet skis raced past. It was a beautiful day and a nice breeze kept us cool. A couple walked by and the man and women had on matching thong swim trunks. Renita and I aren’t used to such sights in Wyoming and we agreed that those swimsuits were not for us.

I guess I could drag this out some more but you have surely already figured out that I never had another bite. So no grilled shark for dinner. Doesn’t matter as we have plenty of cornbread. Cornbread tastes as good as grilled shark, when you don’t have any shark!

At least I will remember this day as the election day on which I caught a really nice shark! Clear skies