A Proper Dive...

Guiding is a funny business.  It can be incredibly rewarding and it can be incredibly frustrating.  It can be backbreaking rowing a boat and it's a long hard day even on the tamest rivers.   If you aren't rowing, you are still up early; prepping  and organizing.  Maybe you need to put together a box lunch for your clients--even if it is just running out to the nearest deli and buying something.  Maybe you need to grab some strike indicators or tie a handful of flies--just in case.  Check the oars.  Do the trailer tires need air?   ...and just one minute:  You forgot the ice for the ice chest.  Granted, you get to do it in some of the most beautiful places on the planet.

The hardest part of the day just might be your clients, though, especially if you are new to the business.  As a seasoned veteran, one can discreetly pick and choose who you want to spend your day with.  Sometimes it's the little white lie:  "I'm pretty well booked up for that week.  I just can't fit you in."   I suppose you can tell the client whatever you want. Chances are that if they made your day miserable, they probably weren't enjoying themselves either and won't be back.  As a newcomer struggling to make ends meet and pay for that expensive drift boat, you pretty much have to book whomever and whenever you can, however.

...and in all fairness, I know most clients aren't out there to make the guides day difficult.  More often than not, it's just a comedy of errors or a little miscommunication.  Beginners will put their reels on backwards or don't tighten the reel seat properly only to have the reel fall off while fighting the biggest fish of the day.  Knot tying can be a nightmare and yet there is always that one person who insists on doing their own rigging.  Knot after knot fails and they want to blame the tippet.  Maybe it's too old--or defective, they'd say, or the  rod is too stiff--although in some cases, that was true!  I was also guilty of all too often putting clients on water that was beyond their skill set, especially when I first started out.  I mistakenly assumed that if someone was willing to pay for a day on the river, they knew one end of the rod from the other; could cast a mile; and had a working knowledge of entomology.  More often than not, though, many were beginners or intermediate level anglers and they wanted learn.  That is a good thing but just the same, it rarely makes a day any shorter or less exhausting.

Then there are the truly difficult clients.  Everything is automatically the guides fault, despite the fact that they can't cast 17 feet and have a moth eaten selection of flies that look like they found them in a close out bin at a crafts workshop for the visually impaired.  You will end up spending as many as 12 hours in a small cramped space listening to a litany of tasteless jokes and offensive remarks, secretly hoping--praying actually that they will slip and drown in a rapid--although that is always bad for one's reputation.  ...and if the Fish and Game rules require a barbless hook, they will be continually trying to put on a barbed hook and arguing with you about that as well. They will insist on using a rod that is far too heavy or one that is far too light--because it's theirs.  Some of them will drink too much...and it will be a miracle if no one is impaled with a hook or a rod broken.

Funny stuff--this guiding business.  One of the sweetest older gentlemen I ever had the pleasure of guiding was also one of the most difficult.  He was a wonderful human being--even if he wasn't actually interested in  fly fishing.  It seems that he had recently retired and after years at a job that owned him, he was at a loss as to what to do with himself.  His wife however made no bones about it.  She did not want him underfoot and moping around the house so she bought him a rod and reel--and lessons; and then when he failed to take the hint, she hired me to guide him.  He and I bonded almost immediately. We shared a few laughs and we found some rising fish.  In fact, we found a lot of rising fish. I put him on a pretty spectacular bite.  He couldn't cast--and he didn't care.  He was having fun.  He couldn't see all that well either so he wasn't hooking a lot of fish but it was one of those days where the brain dead could catch a fish as long as they had a nervous tic.  The fish weren't going to hook themselves!  It turned out though that he was so arthritic that he would tip over on his back cast.  I spent the better part of my day trying to catch him every time he cast.  I lived in dread fear he would  slip or lose his balance.  I'm proud to say that he made it home safely and intact.  I however was exhausted.  You just cannot send clients home damaged. 

Now after a long day, it seems an unusually high number of the guides and river rats that I knew, myself included, would self medicate--usually at a local dive; and it seemed every river worth fishing had a proper dive within a few miles.  This "proper dive" concept is important.  You've been rowing all day.  Maybe you broke a sweat and you are in your ratty Levis so you'd probably stick out like a tuna rod in a float tube in a more upscale establishment.  More importantly, you need a place just sketchy enough that you won't get shot but that difficult client won't want to join you either.  ...and just as importantly, one needs to be able to afford at least a few rounds on the odd chance that you run into someone who has something to say.  Cheap is good--unless we are talking about gin or talk.  There is no evil or so foul on this earth as a cheap gin but that is another topic.  As for cheap talk, well, some anglers are renowned for their ability to, shall we say, "enhance a story" and add fish and inches to the days tally...  Personally I avoid them--and cheap gin.

 The Sac is a world class trout fishery that I guided on for a few years, going through a boat and a raft in the process.   Access is limited so most anglers end up floating it and it can be wildly unpredictable.  There were those days where every second or third cast resulted in a hook up.  Fish would be rising every 5 feet in a riffle that was the size of a football field.  Then there were those days that drove strong men to drink or at least seek the comfort and solace of other guides --who might also have a tidbit of useful information.  The bite would shut off so completely that you were convinced the river had been poisoned by a chemical spill--which did happen in the upper reaches; or the fish would move, which wasn't unusual.  Most of the trout were the progeny of steelhead that just stopped heading downstream once Shasta Dam began filling the river with cold water.  These fish would move into a slot to feed and then just as quickly drop back downstream, sometimes one hundred yards or more.  It was a guessing game as to where they would be on any given day, much less what they would be taking--and it could be incredibly frustrating.  It seemed natural that a person might want to wallow in self pity in front of a cold pint or at least talk to the other guides to get an idea of where the trout were and what they were on. I thought I had found such a place on the lower Sacramento River... I may have been mistaken.

There is a bar that almost fits the bill near one of the take outs on the river.  It shall for many reasons, remain nameless so let's just call it "the Dock". The beer was cold, the food was almost always edible, almost always hot and the price was almost always right..    What more does a person need?  It was a bonafide dive.  It's just that the "not getting shot" could have been an issue.  The first time I went in there, I thought this was the place!  A burger with fries was all of three dollars and three drinks cost less than what I would pay for one in the Bay area.  Granted it was too close to a trailer park or two and the owners son fancied himself an outlaw biker but those were minor details.  Most of the time, it was quiet, filled with a few folks ekeing out a hard scrabble existence and living paycheck to paycheck.  Weekends could get a little more lively with at least a shouting match or two, some dysfunctional family drama thrown in for effect and maybe even some good old fashioned fisticuffs.  Generally, though, the evenings were dead and the afternoons even quieter.  A few other guides and river rats would stumble in just often enough to keep me coming back.  It did sometimes get weird.  I suppose the people who like these small towns and backwaters might be a little antisocial to begin with.   I'm sure some have a few secrets to hide but an outsider (me) should keep their back to the wall, ears open and mouth shut.

Weird is too kind--too mild a term, actually.  It was a Saturday and I had a break between clients.  I'd spent the morning sorting out my driftboat--organizing and cleaning up the bits of tippet and funk that can collect in the bottom of a boat.  It was a beautiful spring day and a cold beer sounded about right so I headed over to the Dock.   The place was empty with the exception of the bartender and one other customer, a despondent looking character who struck me as an alcoholic.  He was hunched over, elbows on the bar with his head in his hands and half a beer sitting in front of him.    I sat down a few seats to the left of him at the bar and nodded a hello.  He grunted. The beer sat there, getting warm.  Apparently he wasn't much of a conversationalist or was downright unfriendly, not that it mattered.  I'm going to go with "unfriendly" because about a half hour later another customer came in.  The newcomer was in a wheelchair being pushed by a dumpy middle aged woman.  At first, I thought the three of them knew each other. The drunk at the bar looked

over at the man in the wheelchair and said  "Get your ass out of that chair".  The newcomer, however did not know the drunk and looked puzzled.  He replied cautiously "Hey! I was in 'Nam and I got shot up pretty bad."  "So?" replied the drunk.  The newcomer ignored the drunk at that point and his companion wheeled him past me. The woman parked his chair just to the left of me and sat at the bar as well.   They seemed pleasant enough, maybe a little morose after that initial encounter and the ensuing small talk was hushed.

The drunk had ordered another beer and after 10 minutes or so, looked over at the newcomer, staring intently.   He then, very matter of fact, said  "You're a pussy."  What planet was I on, what god forsaken place was I in that someone would pick a bar fight with a paraplegic?  The newcomer, however,  had a pained look on his face--a look that suggested he had once before been accused of being a fraud; of sitting on a street corner with a cardboard sign that said "Disabled vet.  Will work for food".  He stammered, "No man.  I got shot up pretty bad."  The drunk spat back  "You're a pussy.  I was there."  A long drawn out silence ensued.  I wanted no part of that scene so I was the one with head down at that point but I could see the drunk fidgeting.  Suddenly something went flying over my head.  It was a leg, a fucking artificial leg, heavily tattooed.  The drunk had taken off his artificial leg and thrown it at the newcomer in the wheelchair!  Clearly I was on another planet. At any moment Elvis will enter the room. The drunk was screaming "You're a pussy.  You're a pussy!" and suddenly another limb went flying over my head.  Now the drunk is on the ground hopping around on his stump legs, still screaming at the guy in the wheelchair "You're a pussy.  You're a pussy!"  Had they been speaking Italian, this could have been a scene right out of Fellini or worthy of David Lynch.  I was in awe of the heavily tattooed prosthetics.  The entire scene was beyond surreal...

The drunk eventually calmed down. and hopped back up on his bar stool.  I have no idea what happened to the artificial legs.  I think the newcomer offered to buy him a drink and the two began trading war stories.  Meanwhile, I no longer guide but I am still searching for a proper dive to get a beer after a long day on the water --a place where the customers wont be throwing prosthetic limbs at each other.

Midnight

Midnight was the strange one--although living in San Francisco, I'm not sure that he actually was.  He was different and in a town where most everyone paraded their sexuality openly and proudly, he was surprisingly reserved--at least about that particular topic.  Otherwise, he had motormouth--which is how he came to be called "Midnight".

  We were all fly fishermen, and in most cases, relatively new to the sport and we bonded over that, no matter how different we were.   We frequented the few fly fishing shops that were in town, drooling over the latest and greatest gadgetry, the new reels and the latest breakthroughs in graphite technology.  Sometimes we even bought things, although more often than not, it was just a magazine with the latest 4 color glossy fish porn or $3 worth of fly tying materials.  None of us actually had any money except for maybe Carter who would eventually come to be known as "Stockmarket".  At best, half the group were trout bums, a fourth wished they were-- and the remaining fourth knew better.

Midnight had a few dollars.  He was even gainfully employed as a graphic designer which meant he had this really cool loft, at least in our eyes, south of Market-- and reliable transportation.  Cool, however, is a relative term.  In those days, bodies were still being disposed of in alleys south of Market.  It wasn't an everyday occurrence but it happened often enough that one didn't wander around late at night...  Otherwise --all things considered,--he was almost respectable.  It's just that he would show up at whatever fly shop was our new favorite haunt five minutes before closing and manage to talk for at least 45 minutes past closing.  Of course, if you were the one who had just spent 8 grueling frustrating hours behind the cash register, it seemed like he was going to talk until well past midnight when all you wanted to do was go home.  The shopkeepers put up with it, though, because invariably he would buy an expensive piece of equipment.  He probably kept a few fly shops in business by himself.

...and so it was that he became known as "Midnight".

I liked him.  Other than the occasional bout of motormouth, he was engaging and intelligent.  He didn't smell bad. He didn't steal and he had gas money.  Remember, we are talking about trout bums here...   Four or five hours in a car on your way to whatever Blue Ribbon trout stream that was featured in last months fish porn centerfold, you really get to know a person--or you don't.  These things are important.  It can end up being four hours of very awkward and generally pointless small talk as you debate important things-- like tippet diameter and using polar bear fur substitutes to tie obscure patterns that no one in their right mind would actually fish.

...or you can talk about life, love and death.  We did. Midnight and I usually talked about weighty subjects, waxed poetic and saved the earth at least three or four times in the course of a road trip.  The one exception--the topic that was never really broached, though--was his apparently nonexistent love life.  This is not to say that Midnight didn't get teased.  Someone in the group, concerned about his lack of a love life or a sex life, decided that an anatomically correct sheep might be an appropriate birthday gift.  I'm not sure I had any part in that but then again, my memory is blurry.  Maybe deliberately so because as I recall, Midnight gleefully shared that he popped said anatomically correct sheep.  I realized then that I really didn't need any further details...

Midnight and I fished together whenever we could, partly because it was some sort of personal challenge to him to to outfish me.  I suppose I knew more about the sport and could lay claim to having actually guided once upon a time but being outfished or caring about being outfished was not high on my list of concerns.  Regardless, our outings were different but enjoyable.

Different may not actually be the right way to describe most of our adventures...  Bizarre, perhaps?

We had been fishing the Trinity River on the Special Regulations section and both of us had done exceptionally well.  In fact, towards the end of the day, I had hooked a spectacular specimen--a late run steelhead.   Trinity fish pale in comparison to the huge winter run steelhead that haunt the North Coast.  Just the same, this was a very nice fish and it had risen to a small Pale Evening Dun, making it that much more special.  I was doing everything in my power to land that fish, plowing into the river in my best re-enactment of  the scene from "A River Runs Through It"  where the protagonist is swept over the rapids.  It was dark by the time I landed that fish--too dark for the requisite hero shot and Midnight was far downstream so it became a matter of faith.  No witnesses.  No photographs--only my excited retelling of the epic struggle--which as most anglers know--will often border on pure fantasy.  It is a well known fact that most anglers will add at least three inches to any fish they have landed if there are no witnesses and a full six inches to the length of any fish they have lost. I'd like to think I am above that but sometimes in the adrenalin rush, inches do get added.

It didn't matter.  We were both tired and it was time for a drink so we headed to the Old Lewiston Hotel.  Colorful would be an understatement but back in the day, it served a stiff drink and one of the best prime ribs I have ever had.  It's changed hands a few times since then.  The food isn't quite the same and the patrons aren't quite as colorful but that particular day will always be remembered.   We walked into the bar in the middle of another fisherman breathlessly telling a story about an enormous steelhead someone had caught that afternoon.  He was hopping excitedly from foot to foot with his hands outstretched  over his head and saying "The fish was this big!"   He turned, and seeing Midnight and I walking into the room, pointed at me and said "...and that's the guy who caught it!" 

Yes, I had an ear to ear grin but that wasn't the part that was so memorable.  It was the mountain women...

They were sitting at the bar.  Midnight was exhausted and a few drinks later, he was

close to passed out--not that he wanted anything to do with them to begin with. I understood completely.  The kindest thing that I can say about these two women is that they were not especially attractive nor would you ever describe them as fit and athletic. Some men will, if stranded on a desert island, begin to view a coconut as worthy of their attention and even sexually appealing.  I was not and have never been that sort of man.  I have some standards.   It was however, our usual watering hole and there is no point in being rude so there was a certain amount of polite if strained small talk.  I guess I just wasn't disinterested enough and Midnight not intoxicated enough to dissuade them from deciding that they were going to take us back to their camp.  I only vaguely remember that part of the conversation--something about them needing our genetic material.  It  was also at that point that Midnight more or less woke up and in all probability, saved us from what may have been a threat to public health or at the very least a very awkward situation. 

It seems the mountain women had brought their small dog, a chihuahua in the bar with them.  It was running around underneath the bar stools when Midnight spotted it and in his alcoholic haze he began shouting "It's a rat.  It's a rat!"   "No, Midnight, it's a chihuahua".  "Oh..." and then he calmed down except that he was staring intently at the dog.  You know there is no way this can turn out well and sure enough, Midnight lunged at the dog.  "It's eyes!  Look at the way they are bulging. They're coming out!  I need to fix them" which normally would have been hysterically funny to me except that he was dead serious.  This was a godsend.  I turned to the two exceptionally unattractive mountain women and with as straight a face as was humanly possible, said  "I'd love to go back to your camp and fuck all night but I think I really need to get him home."   One of the women did make a feeble attempt to block the door but we managed to make good our escape.

Midnight and I continued to fish together until I finally moved out of San Francisco  a few years later.  He detested my taste in women as a rule and I didn't pry into his love life so it worked.  It was on one of our last fishing trips together, however, that I realized how little I actually knew about Midnight.  We were on our way to Hat Creek which can only be described as an oasis in the middle of a volcanic wasteland.  The surrounding countryside is sun baked and rocky with the exception of the lush meadows and fields that depend on water stolen from the creek.  The creek can only be diverted so many times before it runs dry in places only to be renewed by the springs that dot it's length.

I digress...  We were on a back road, a narrow twisting two lane black top and the windows were down because of the heat.  One of the greatest things about sharing a ride with Midnight was that the phrase "speed limit" was not actually in his vocabulary but this time it wasn't working out so well.  I was white knuckling it, finger nails digging into the upholstery as we flew through the turns.  Suddenly, Midnight began screaming and slapping at his crotch.  This was not good.  He was wearing a pair of shorts that made him look way too much like a male prostitute--although men routinely dressed badly in those days; and all I could think of  was this is not how I want to die--not with a man of dubious sexual interests who has  (or had) an anatomically correct sheep and is now slapping at his crotch at 90 miles an hour.

I guess I am not as open minded as I thought.  It seems a yellow jacket had blown in the open window, managed to work it's way up his shorts and stung him on the most sensitive part of his inner thigh.

 

Shark Fishing

I think every small boy dreams of catching a big fish.  I did.  It was too many days spent on the harbor breakwater watching others catch fish and the mandatory high school readings of Hemingway, Zane Grey and Steinbeck that drove me to that precipice.  I lived and breathed fish throughout my puberty, interrupted only by the infrequent romance, the even rarer girlfriend and subsequent break up, complete with resulting heartbreak--which was then naturally healed by more fishing. I dreamed of marlin and sailfish and epic struggles in the hot sun as braided line peeled off a reel the size of a blender.

Of course, it helps if one has a codependent or enabler and I had many.  I'm also pretty sure that I fished because my father didn't.  His dysfunction, his struggles with mental illness and the abuse that was heaped upon us at home must have shown on my face because the woodshop teacher at the high school reached out to me.  He reached out to pretty much every at risk child he met--and he was a fisherman.  More importantly, he surrounded himself with other fishermen.  I'm sure there is some sort of Biblical inference one could make but none of these fishers of men were even remotely saintly.  At best, they stayed out of jail and students thrived on their pranks and escapades.  Interoffice memos were all too often used to send soiled panties in sizes that could be measured in feet instead of inches to another unsuspecting but hardly innocent teacher.  Naturally, we adored them.

Taylor was part of that crew although he wasn't a teacher.  In fact, he was an accountant for the county.  That's not exactly the kind of occupation most of the group dreamed of but Taylor juggled his schedule and had enough seniority that he could work 4 days a week and fish three, leaving just about zero time for relationships.  That suited Taylor just fine.  Relationships--unless they were with other fishermen--interfered with one's God given right to fish.

In retrospect Taylor was socially awkward, more than a bit stiff and an introvert--which meant he was the stuff legends were made of; and Taylor fished for sharks.  Taylor fished for really big sharks--Threshers and Great Whites and the infrequent Mako or Hammerhead.  ...and Taylor had numerous records for big sharks.  He had one extraordinarily ugly ass wooden skiff that the students in the woodshop class had built for him.  It floated.  That was about it but he was happy with it.  The rest of us, however, referred to it as "the submarine".  It was a dull battleship gray--probably because gray was on sale somewhere and more often than not, had a generous coating of guts of one sort or another and the usual seagull droppings.

 Now being single was a plus in Taylor's world.  He would stop at nothing if it meant a shot at catching a world record shark.  He would routinely fill his refrigerator with  bait--not any old bait, though.  Mackeral and bonito the size that most people would have been happy to catch spilled out of the refrigerator.   The freezer was usually filled with 5 gallon buckets of  blood and gore that he picked up from a local butcher to later use for a chum line, the slowly melting block of offal leaving a distinctive trail behind the submarine.  It was the kind of thing that horrified a date, not that he ever had any -- and sent the sharks into a frenzy.

I suppose shark fishing is a lot like catfishing.  The more disgusting the bait or the chum line, the better it seemed to work.  Accordingly, one of Taylors favorite baits was road kill--although in Southern California that, more often than not, was somebody's missing pet.   He traveled everywhere with a pair of rubber gloves, plastic bags and a pile of old newspapers on the odd chance that he would find some good road kill...which is how I first heard about Taylor.  It seems he had been driving down an alley in town when he saw a dog sprawled out in the road.  He, according to most versions of the story, slammed on the brakes of his old  Chevy Blazer, jumped out, slipped on the gloves and proceeded to roll the dog up in the newspaper.  Most of us might even view this as a public service but Taylor hadn't noticed that the dog wasn't dead--not until it bit him.  It seems it wasn't hurt--or anything else-- just one lazy dog laying out in the sun. I never did figure out why he needed newspaper, though.  I suppose it was less of a shock to open the freezer and see last weeks LA Times instead of the neighbors cat?

Anyways, this cemented Taylors stature amongst our little dysfunctional group of anglers and wanna-be anglers, not that his reputation actually needed any further embellishment.  By that time, he had numerous state records and line class records.  He had long ago obtained a commercial fishing license and sold almost everything he caught to subsidize his habit--which meant he routinely put some very big sharks in the submarine to either be weighed or sold. 

...and were you wondering how the submarine came to be called the "submarine"?  I suppose it was designed --if one can call it that--to fish the less than challenging waters of  the Santa Monica Bay.  Surfers got excited if they saw a three foot swell and sailors dreamed of 8 knot winds.  Tame was an understatement--with a few exceptions--so the submarine had maybe 16 inches of freeboard.  If the wind did blow, you were going to get wet and be bailing furiously.  None of this ever stopped Taylor from filling the submarine with shark, though, and on one trip in particular he had landed a Thresher that was a rumored 385 pounds.  That was dangerously close to another state record so in the submarine it went.  Naturally, Taylor continued to fish and hooked and landed another Thresher that later weighed in at 425 pounds.  In the submarine it went, shark sticking out of either end of the skiff and the boat sitting so low in the water that the slightest chop would have sunk it. Taylor couldn't swim either, not that it would have mattered.  You see, he routinely shot the sharks before he put them in the boat.  It made sense.  These sharks were upwards of 14 feet long and the submarine was only 20 feet long so there just wasn't a lot of room for a shark to be flopping around.  The problem was the slick of blood and gore trailing out behind the submarine--and the sharks that smelled the blood.  On a good day, there was a constant posse of sharks tailing the submarine.  On a bad day, there would be even more...

Needless to say, I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I finally got invited to go fishing with Taylor on the submarine.  I was all of 17 and had never caught anything bigger than a red snapper.  The bait was bigger than most of the fish I caught. I was ready to be transported to the world of Hemingway and Zane Grey --except it didn't actually happen quite like that.  The submarine was fitted with a fighting chair but it was a budget model that looked an awful lot like a lawn chair.  Taylor was frugal almost to the point of excess.  In fact, he would sometimes shoot a shark just to get the stainless steel hook back.  Not every shark was headed for the fish market to later be sold as swordfish.  Some just weren't especially edible but Taylor couldn't abide the thought of having to replace a stainless leader and hook either.

Just the same, I was ready for whatever came my way.  I was now part of this cadre of insanely intent fishermen who for the most part, lived and breathed fish.  It was rumored some had gills instead of lungs and only a few were capable of maintaining relationships for any length of time.  The shortest version is that I now wanted to prove that I was worthy and I dutifully hung on every word of instruction that Taylor uttered.  He very carefully showed me how to bait the hook through the nose of the bonito, explaining that there was a reason it was sometimes called a bonehead...  I baited the hook and proceeded to play line out behind the boat.  Within minutes, I had a hook up.  I braced myself and set the hook.  My heart was racing, my feet were braced against the stern and I was praying that that tired fighting chair stayed together for at least one more fish.  Line was beginning to peel off the reel...and then suddenly everything went slack!  The silence was deafening.  Disappointment hung like a tule fog over the submarine and I slowly reeled my line back in.  I'll fast forward: The bait was virtually unscathed with the exception of a few teeth marks.  It seems in my youthful enthusiasm and being somewhat muscle bound in those days, I wanted to show Taylor just how strong and clever I was--and buried the hook so deep in the skull of that bonito that there was some question if the shark had ever even felt the point of the hook.  It had simply held on to the bait until it tired of our little game of tug of war. 

Taylor really didn't need to say much.  The look in his eyes said it all but he was willing to give me another chance although it seemed like an eternity before the next hook up.  This time everything went right though, and once again, I was in the fighting chair, wondering just what was at the other end of that line.  The reels we were using were the old Penn Senators, the size of coffee cans and the 125 pound braided line was peeling off the spool as if it were sewing thread.  For those of you who have never fished big game, these were stout fiberglass rods, the butt sections as thick as the grip on a Louisville Slugger--and it was bent over as if it had all the backbone of an overcooked pasta. 

This was the kind of fishing that adds a whole new meaning to the word "fear".  The submarine, already questionable as far as how seaworthy it really was, was now slowly being towed backwards.  One wake, one swell hitting us just right and we would have been just another snack item, another morsel for the other sharks trailing the submarine...  Needless to say, everything--or almost everything went right and I  lived to finish the story.  I don't know how long I fought that shark.  It wasn't epic by any means and didn't weigh much more than 175 pounds but that was 175 pounds of finely honed fighting muscle and 150 pounds bigger than anything I had ever caught before. Taylor, however was understandably unimpressed.  He had no children so that look of Christmas morning in my eyes--the excitement and sense of accomplishment never registered.  Instead he handed me a shotgun and in as dry and taciturn voice as any human could utter, simply warned me to not miss; not put a hole in the bottom of the boat--and don't hit the leader.  I often wondered if he thought he had to pay for every word he used because he used them so sparingly...

Pride is a funny thing.  I so desperately wanted to be part of this group of seasoned anglers and the last thing I wanted Taylor to know was that I had never even touched, much less fired a shotgun before.  I'd been to a Boy Scout summer camp and fired a few .22 rounds at the gun range there but that was nothing like the kick of a shotgun.  Granted, it was only a 20 gauge but I needed more than anything else to do this right.  Naturally, that meant I did almost everything wrong.  I practically touched the barrel of that shotgun to the head of the shark, closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.  The ocean erupted into a geyser of shark bits and spray; and in a moment that will forever define Taylor --a moment that will always be etched in my memory, he stood there wiping off shark from his glasses and without ever raising his voice, simply said  "I think you got him".