Sharks at Haven Beach

This old fisherman caught a juvenile sand shark one evening as we were enjoying the beach (I have no clue why I didn't pull out my camera to take a photo of it).  He let the Brat Child touch its skin and told us he had caught about 12 sharks that week in total fishing from the rocks at Haven Beach.  We watched as he gently let the shark go back to the Bay.

  This was in sharp contrast to the gentleman who caught a juvenile sand shark this past August.  He did show it to my mother and the Brat Child as they walked by, and then he proceeded to gut it right there on the beach.  Now, I've heard that you have to clean a shark pretty soon after catching it if you want to use it for your supper.  However, I think throwing the guts into the area where people swim is slightly rude.  Especially when there were people actually swimming there.  Nothing says relaxation more than watching seagulls fly off with shark intestines dangling from their beaks.
You're welcome for that image.

Deltaville Shark Week

In honor of Shark Week, I'll be blogging about sharks.  It may be a literal blog about sharks, it might be only peripherally related to sharks, but one way or the other, I'll be blogging about them all week.  This being Monday and my usual day to include quotes to ponder... here are a few about sharks.

1 of 2 sharks my mother caught while fishing on vacation

I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs.

~Peter Benchly

This shark, swallow you whole. 

~Quint, Jaws

 

I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself. Fish are friends, not food.  

~ Bruce the Shark, Finding Nemo

Fishing Trips

I find it fascinating how certain tastes, sounds and smells can immediately take someone back to a specific memory.  Looking for a late night snack, I pulled out a box of Cheese-Its.  I don't know if it was strictly that sharp salty cheese flavor or a combination of that and looking through photos for the blog, but immediately I was 10 again and fishing on Pepop's boat.

That's me perched on the bow behind Pepop's black lab Sheba.  

It was always a wrestling match with Sheba over who would stand/sit at the point of the bow.  

Sheba typically won.

She was known to knock people off of things like piers and boats.
(I can't help but chuckle over the memory of Sheba knocking my cousin Kelly face first into the marsh muck at low tide- if only I had a camera then)

Pepop was always at the helm and always in the same attire.

Every summer, Pepop would take all of the kids out on his boat Pigpen to go fishing.  

Grandmother and Aunt Patsy would send us next door with some snacks, which were almost always Cheese-Its and cans of Slice.  

 It apparently had 10% real fruit juice in it. 

At Pepop's house we gathered up our fishing rods and headed to the boat.  

Pepop's rods were unique in that all the hooks were covered by Memom's cigarette butts.  

She was always afraid that someone would run a hook through their skin (which I've done).

Once aboard Pigpen, we would head out to the river.  

Once in our spot, we would all wait patiently for Pepop to bait our hooks, which was always a dangerous operation.

At  the most there would be 5 kids with swinging fishing rigs on a small work boat.  

Someone would be moving empty hooks to get bait, 

someone else would be moving loaded hooks out of the way and 

someone would be casting- and that meant pulling the the rod way back before flinging it forward.  Everyone wanted to be the one with the furthest and best cast.  

Everything is a competition after all. 

It was a dangerous maypole dance of un-cigarette-butted fishing hooks.

Not being known for patience, I usually felt something tugging my line every minute or so and was continuously reeling in the line to check the bait.  

Sometimes I would find a blue crab on the line and sometimes I'd find my bait gone

but most times I just found that the bait was intact and I had nothing.

  On the hundredth time I checked my line, I swore I had something.  

My cousins groaned and laughed and made fun of me- until I pulled a spot on the boat.  

I had hooked it in the stomach as I reeled the line in.

It didn't really matter how I got it, I was vindicated.

A spot I caught when I was 2-3 on my dad's boat, not a Pepop trip (note my chicken pox)

Another time I checked my line and saw the rod bend in a U shape.  

I got excited and I jerked to set the bait and started reeling in my catch. 

It was heavy whatever it was.  

I was thinking it was probably a shark, maybe even a Great White. 

I jerked and reeled and jerked and reeled and as I jerked one final time I simultaneously heard Pepop tell me to stop and suddenly the rig burst from the water and sailed right past Pepop's head.  

I had apparently hooked the bottom of the boat (nearly hooked Pepop's head).

At some point Memom would radio Pepop and ask him if we were all wearing our life jackets.  

This prompted Pepop to quickly tell us, "Put them on! Put them on!" and once we were all standing with our life preservers on, he would radio back to her that yes, we were wearing them (and then they were taken off).

Eventually, some of us would get bored with fishing.  

The snacks would come out and we would sit around, 

rolling with the waves drinking warm Slice and eating Cheese-Its.  

I usually got tired of Cheese-Its and would begin feeding the seagulls.  

Of course I had to do this on the sly as Pepop did not have much love for the seagulls (since one pooped on his shoulder). So I would just quietly drop them over the side of the boat like a trail of bread crumbs.

It never takes long for seagulls to swarm.

This was always Pepop's clue that it was time to pack it up.  

I miss those trips.

I miss that smelly sea green boat.

Vampire Birds

Don't worry, there's no new species of bird out there ready to suck your blood.

Unless you count the mosquitoes that have been recorded

to be the size of a pterodactyl micro bus VW Beetle small bird.

I'm referring to Cormorants.

These are Cormorants.

If you spend any time near the water, I'm sure you've seen them sunning themselves on pilings.

Cormorants are fish eaters and they catch their meal by diving under the water.

Some have been recorded diving up to 45 meters.

After fishing, cormorants appear to dry themselves by holding their wings out to dry in the sun.

However, cormorants' feathers are extremely waterproof.

It's thought that they are actually forcing nearby birds to move away to give them enough space to take off in a hurry.

They remind me of vampires when they do that.

Which is why I titled the post as I did.

In Asia, cormorants are used by fishermen to, well, catch fish. 

They place a collar on the leashed birds to prevent them from swallowing the catch.

Cormorants can actually kill trees.

When they nest in a tree, the accumulating cormorant poop can actually poison the tree and kill it.

Recently, cormorants have been listed as a nuisance bird and blamed for declining fish numbers.
Funny, I'd think commercial overfishing and the use of GPS and radar more of a nuisance and cause for decline, but I guess since you can't shoot people legally....

Old Man and the Sea

One of my favorite Hemingway books is The Old Man and the Sea.  So when I saw this old salt fishing from the jetty at Haven Beach, I had to snap some photos.  Right after these photos were taken, he caught a small sand shark.  I'm not sure why I didn't think to take photos of the shark, or or the man letting the Brat Child touch he shark or of the shark slowly swimming away.  But I'm glad I got the couple of shots I did.

On a side note, while talking about fishing and sand sharks, the fisherman informed me that the shark he caught while at the beach that day was the 12th one that week.  Great...

Hauling Nets

Gill nets.... you either love 'em or hate 'em, mostly hate 'em.  Pepop was known to put out a gill net now and then.  Pepop must have been the model for Tom Sawyer as he had a way of suckering kids into child labor making kids think work was fun and therefore helping him with his chores.  One of these chores was setting the gill net in the evening then hauling it in the wee morning hours of the next day.  Very wee hours.  Like no-human-in-their-right-mind-would-willingly-get-up-to-go-haul-stinkin'-fish-nets hours. 

Anyway, the routine was that in the evening we would ride out on Pigpen (Pepop's boat) to go set the net.  He typically put it in the Rappahanock not too far from the mouth of the Bay.  I remember throwing buoys over, then the ole hand-over-hand of slowly feeding the net into the water.  S-L-O-W-L-Y (also read agonizingly boring for a kid).  Usually there was always some sort of tangle to work out.  Eventually we'd get'r done and head home watching the sun set behind the Robert O. Norris Jr. Bridge (or the Rappahannock River Bridge).

I stole borrowed this picture to show what the gill net looks like once it's been set.  Fascinating.

Come morning the hours before morning, we would get up, dress, maybe grab a snack and head over to Pepop's Pier to board the boat and head to sea the rivah to see what we caught.  I would be lying if I tried to say that I hated this part.  I loved to go bring in the net.  There was the sense of surprise- "What would we get??!"  Sometimes we were lucky and caught a Great White sand shark which was the best prize of all- for a couple of 8 years olds anyway. 

But it was early (before 4am- we had to be over Pepop's by 4- 4:30).  Very early for a couple of kids.  My cousin Kelly and I overslept one morning and woke up to the sound of the engine.  We jumped up, threw on clothes (I distinctly remember a bright red windbreaker I owned that I always wore) and proceeded to race across the front lawns of our neighbors screaming for Pepop to wait for us.  Luckily we were fast and made it to the public pier where he picked us up (If I remember correctly he was laughing- I'm sure the neighbors were not).

The trip out to the river was the best.  Usually the waves were large enough that we could lean over the side of the boat and soak our heads.  Kelly and I loved doing this and always tried to tell our grandmother that we had fallen over.  I'm not sure, but I don't think she believed us seeing as how only our heads were wet.

Pepop was lucky enough to have a gill net hauler.  He had 2- their names were Jamie and Kelly.  Usually there was another adult there to help since child labor laws make it illegal to force us to work we were little.  We'd haul the net, watching for anything more interesting than a Spot or Croaker.  The sun would begin to rise over the Bay and we'd head back with our catch- soaking our heads the whole way. 

Don't get excited, stole this pic too from the AP News, it really is the sunrise on the Rappahannock near Deltaville.