Kayak Fishing and Sharks

Got to hand it to you Eric. You think about it but doesn't fester as it does with me. Only one concerns me. Last year in Mass. I was a few miles north east of camp. With absolutely no one around. Bailing 20” fish and trying to escape them. I’m averaging 10-20’ of water and I see huge stone island 100 yds from shore. The back of my mind kept saying watch for seals. Thankfully I seen none. Still felt uneasy and should, as all I know from that area have stories since the come back of the seals.
Down here I'm still uneasy if I launch early am. Not so of I stay up all day and go out at dusk. Being at water level on something skinny like Revo. You got to admit we don't have a prayer.
As of this year. Plymouth, Rockport, Manchester, Marblehead, all had confirmed sightings. Check out this map of the Cape for this season. I'll pass on that. Seems they only list confirmed sightings (Life Guard, Harbor master).
Still looking forward to it.

Went back out (and stayed focused). I did come pretty close to what I think was likely a small whale. I've never run into dolphin out there at night and this had a blowhole. Then I learned that there was whale carcass 5 miles away with bite marks. No surprise that there would be more sharks around; warm waters, lots of porgies, sea bass, blues, bait, and a whale carcass to snack on. The only thing missing is the theme music.

I did come pretty close to what I think was likely a small whale. I've never run into dolphin out there at night and this had a blowhole.

Not for nothing, but dolphins and porpoises also have blowholes and when it's quiet on the water you can hear them "blow" just like whales.

Exactly. I've just never run in to them at night before, unlike the whales. I've also gotten close to sea turtles out there at night, but they seemed to make no noise at all except a splash as they took off. After an initial expulsion of air, it seemed to gasp for air in shorter faster breaths, then just dropped back beneath the surface - no splash like I'd expect from something smaller than a whale. In other instances at the Point I'd heard them pass from a distance and on boats offshore while drifting at night they'd pass us closely, curious about our lights, electronics, bait, etc.

Theme to jaws. Hmm where can I go with this at Shootout? Nothing like feeding my immaturity Eric.

OK, so I've learned a little more on this subject since first posting. I made two trips to the Point without incident since the last shark encounter, but then I had to sit out a bit while my wife and daughter were out of town for five days. I couldn't leave my 14-year-old son at home by himself while I kayak fished off Montauk Point, so I resigned myself to a week of Discovery Channel watching shark specials that I've mostly seen before. I thought it would get inside my head and I'd have a hard time relaxing when I got back out on the water. Instead just the opposite happened: I became desensitized to it and after watching sharks for five days straight I was somewhat nonplused when an 8-footer followed my bluefish to within a few feet of me. I was actually more annoyed than anything else, and I REALLY didn't want to lose another $18 lure. In that moment my protocol changed. Don't just automatically cut the line and run, but don't let the fish languish either. Get it in and get it in fast, and you can just disconnect quickly before the shark comes in close. The risk, as it was tonight, was with the BIG bluefish that doesn't come off the hook so easily. You might have to pull it into your lap, if keeping the lure is that important. Individual discretion. I would have lost more lures than I brought tonight if I'd just cut and run each time. Out of 7 1/2 fish tonight (7 blues and a half a bass), I had sharks on 4 of them. That's unusually frequent. A sign of my increasing comfort level was that I briefly considered leaving the bluefish on the line about ten feet away from me so that I could get video of it getting devoured by the shark. A sign of my good sense was that I didn't do that. I worked quickly, kept my lures and my hands, and decided to go.
I noticed that under normal circumstances if I had a blue fish on it will usually come to the surface but not right away. When I have a blue fish on and it's being chased by a shark it comes to the surface immediately and jumps repeatedly. It wasn't difficult to tell tonight when my fish were being pursued tonight.
I had occasion to speak with a sharpie tonight as I was warning him about the sharks and he said that he had noticed the increased encounters as well. He told me that two nights ago he had a blue shark come up behind him and grab a blue fish that he had just released. It came up right behind him in waist-deep water and he never saw it until it was 3 feet away.
Then there was an unnerving incident that happened as I was leaving: after reeling in half of a striped bass I finally conceded the evening to the sharks and left them to their meals. As I tossed the tail-less fish into the water and exited the scene I could hear the shark circle back around to finish the meal. But then a short while later as I was heading back into shore I had a larger shark follow me into the shallows to my launch spot. I could tell that it was behind me because in the remaining light of dusk I could see the swirls in the water and I could see the bluefish reacting to its intrusion and splash as they quickly swam away. This wasn't happening in front of me or under me as I moved along. It would happen behind me, after I'd passed. Unlike me and the kayak, whatever was following me back to shore was scaring the hell out of the bluefish. That was creepy.
This was the best story though, related to me by the same sharpie that had the blue shark sneak up on him. He said that last week a friend of his was (wetsuit) fishing from a rock on the south side - I'm thinking it was probably Caswells - and he landed a huge bass, close to 50. Two big brown sharks got ahold of it and he lost his fish. He said his friend stayed and continued to fish, eventually hooking one of the sharks on a live eel and getting bitten off, not surprisingly. What was unusual was that the sharks didn't leave. He said they circled the rock for hours and the guy had to wait until after sunrise before he could swim back to shore.
So my latest lesson in sharks and kayak fishing is that it's not so black and white that I can have an automatic response. It's dynamic, and I have to be able to read the situation. If I'd only seen one shark tonight then that would be one shark, but tonight they owned Montauk Point and they were not going to let me catch anything without getting their piece of it. A good time to go home.

So where practicing self rescue next week. "Thanks" 😢

As a follow-up, I went back out two nights later and was catching big bluefish I decided tbat in addition to getting tbe fish in faster than I otberwise would, a way to help that process might be to "chase down" every fish as if it were a big bass and expedite the process of quickly getting the struggling fish boated or disconnected. The bluefish I was fighting were definitely acting especially "squirrely," each jumping repeatedly and predictably splashing up a storm as I was taking them off the hook. This made me a little nervous, but taking the large thrashing bluefish into the kayak just added to the clamor. When I worked shark charters, we used to attract sharks to the boat by banging and slapping on the side. The light was limited after the moon set and seas were building. I've often found big bass feeding where big bluefish feed, but this time I just wasn't getting that warm and fuzzy feeling.

My comfort level had dropped just enough to convince me to leave. I'm always asking myself when more than one thing starts to go in the wrong direction, is it a "challenge" or a "message?" In this case it really doesn't matter because if I'd hooked up with a bass that I knew was a 50, would I be enjoying the fight or would I be rushing it and worrying about losing it to brown sharks? Likely the latter. Time to pack it in. I left them "biting" and called it a night early.

I forgot to mention in my "What Not To Do" post an interesting incident that (I think) happened while I was checking the surf at Montauk Point. As I was watching the size of the waves and the cluster of boats that were southeast of me and closer to the rip, I texted to my friend - and it was true - that it was low tide and the seals had moved into very shallow water only about 2 ft deep. They were right in the break, and with the tide dead low I mentioned to my friend that they seem to be reluctant to go out into the deeper water and I attached a ?.

He replied, and I agreed, that with all those seals to eat they probably wouldn't need to snack on us.

But about 10 minutes after that and a mile off False Bar I witnessed a huge series of splashes in the water. It definitely wasn't a whale breaching. It definitely WAS something that weighed hundreds of pounds. Ordinarily, my first thought would be that it's a thresher shark feeding on the same bait and cocktail blues that the boats to the south were following around. In this the case however, given the time of year, and with all the whites that have been spotted - albiet mostly dead, there is certainly room to speculate.

Shortly after the huge splash, two boats headed north and stopped exactly where it had happened. I didn't see anything noteworthy after that, and headed back to the far more life-threatening waters that surround Ponquogue Bridge at the end of a holiday weekend. ?

I forgot to mention in my "What Not To Do" post an interesting incident that (I think) happened while I was checking the surf at Montauk Point. As I was watching the size of the waves and the cluster of boats that were southeast of me and closer to the rip, I texted to my friend - and it was true - that it was low tide and the seals had moved into very shallow water only about 2 ft deep. They were right in the break, and with the tide dead low I mentioned to my friend that they seem to be reluctant to go out into the deeper water and I attached a ?.

He replied, and I agreed, that with all those seals to eat they probably wouldn't need to snack on us.

But about 10 minutes after that and a mile off False Bar I witnessed a huge series of splashes in the water. It definitely wasn't a whale breaching. It definitely WAS something that weighed hundreds of pounds. Ordinarily, my first thought would be that it's a thresher shark feeding on the same bait and cocktail blues that the boats to the south were following around. In this the case however, given the time of year, and with all the whites that have been spotted - albiet mostly dead, there is certainly room to speculate.

Shortly after the huge splash, two boats headed north and stopped exactly where it had happened. I didn't see anything noteworthy after that, and headed back to the far more life-threatening waters that surround Ponquogue Bridge at the end of a holiday weekend. ?

Regrettably without a positive visual ID, which would have certainly been "What NOT to do", that remains circumstantial evidence. Had a similar situation recently as large sea creatures were tearing up the water feeding. I assumed giant BFTs, but there were schools of porpoises and dolphins around that day also. I was finally able to confirm my hypothesis when a 6-7 ft BFT went completely airborne, clearing the water by a good 7' 1/4 mile away.

What you saw could have been a large tuna as they love bluefish, although BFT wouldn't impact seal behavior. Regardless, your wisdom in not being curious was quite judicious...