Sean on left. KTLA photo
There is something fascinating about sharks. Kids like them almost as much as dinosaurs and it seems there is a shark TV show somewhere on cable every night. A Mako shark is one of the real scary looking ones and they grow up to 10 feet in length and weigh up to 1,000 lbs. and over. They have been known to attack humans and a Mako was the star of Ernest Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea”.
In a recent fishing tournament a Newbury Park, California man caught a huge one. According to Los Angeles television station KTLA, Sean Carlsen Gizatullin landed what could be the largest fish ever caught in state history. Carlsen Gizatullin was fishing off the coast near Oxnard, which is about half way between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, when he hooked the 1,098 lb. monster.
He told the television station, “It went under the boat a few times, came out twice with its jaws open towards the boat. It didn’t lunge out or anything crazy like Jaws but it was still intense.” Oddly enough, it took him so long to land the shark that he missed the deadline for the weigh-in and didn’t win a thing. Luckily, the state record is pending and Sean’s story will last forever.
I wanna go home
Bears have made several headlines this summer from a black bear taking a vacation in Iowa to a grizzly which unfortunately killed a camper in Yellowstone. Last Tuesday in New Hampshire a black bear decided to make a visit and take home a souvenir.
Laconia is a town in the central part of the state where Mary Beth Parkinson has a house on Holman Street. She and her two sons, ages 6 and 9, left to run some errands and someone left the door open. At just that time a black bear happened by and decided to go in to see what he could find. According to the Associated Press he ate two pears, a bunch of grapes and had a drink from the family’s aquarium. He was probably getting ready to leave when the Parkinsons returned but he did have time to pick up a memento.
Mary Beth thinks she scared the bear off when the garage door opener started chugging away. She saw the shambles in her house and called 911. When police arrived they were thinking the intruder may have been a bear when they received calls about a blackie not far away. The bear did finally slip into the woods and get away but in his haste he dropped his souvenir…the Parkinson’s teddy bear.
New fishing gear?
I thought I had heard of nearly every way possible to fish, but a New York man has taken bizarre to a new level. Paul Melnyk used to fish in surfcasting tournaments out on the end of Long Island. In order to improve his chances he decided to get nearer to the fish and so he donned a wetsuit and swam out to them along with his rod and reel.
Tornament organizers had a cow and threw him out but Melnyk discovered something that day when he hooked a large striped bass. Something that turned out to be so much fun that others have now joined him in this crazy form of offshore fishing. Melnyk told a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, “There used to be a whole bunch of people against this concept. But there’s a new generation of fishermen out there.” In fact the sport has spread around the world thanks to YouTube.
Melnyk’s discovery? If you hook a big fish while you are in the ocean it will tow you through the water on a fantastic ride. He calls the new sport “skishing” meaning a cross between skiing and fishing. Large fish have been known to pull “anglers” hundreds of yards off shore and it’s most often done at night so there is an element of danger. To me there is also an element of nuts.
Blue cat
It was almost one a.m. last Tuesday when Greg Bernal and his girlfriend were about to give up catfishing and head home. Out of nowhere something yanked on Greg’s line and the fight was on. When it was all over, about 45 minutes later, he had caught a potential world record blue catfish out of the Mississippi River near Alton, Illinois.
“That rod just started screaming,” Bernal told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I knew he was big. It raced out, I set the hook and there was no movement at all. I just kept the pressure on him and finally I could feel him thumping.” The fish went 130 pounds which easily exceeds the old record of 124 pounds that was set in 2005.
Bernal told the paper not only is it the biggest fish he’s ever caught, it’s the biggest one he’s ever seen. The brute was 57 inches long and 45 inches around the middle. Conservation biologists estimate the fish to be between 25 and 30 years old. Bernal would not disclose where the hole was he was fishing but he did say he thinks there is an even bigger one down there.
Western rattlesnake
Malta is a small community in southern Idaho not far from I 84. According to the Twin Falls Times-News a man named Terry Teeter decided he’d start a new business to make some extra money in these tough times. He just didn’t quite follow all the rules.
Teeter, 38, has been hunting rattlesnakes for 15 years and is apparently very good at it. He also likes to eat them. First he skins and cleans them and then he puts pieces on hot dog sticks and grills them. He told the paper, “They taste like chicken.” Naturally he thought other people would like them as well so he put 32 Western rattlesnakes in a bucket and went looking for customers. Along the way he ate some and gave a few away. When the Idaho Fish and Game officer found him he only had 27.
You can hunt rattlesnakes in Idaho…but you can only take 4 a year and you need to buy a license. Teeter didn’t know you even needed a license and he was quite a few over the limit. He got two tickets and all his product confiscated. Wildlife officers later released the snakes into the wild but made the mistake of letting Teeter find out where they dumped them. Teeter told the paper, “Me and a buddy went there the next day and got them all.” There is a lesson in here somewhere.
One good thing happened
I know you have been inundated with stories about the Gulf oil spill but here’s one that defies belief. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is home to a U.S. Naval Base where a prison has been built to detain people suspected to be terrorists. Last December an army soldier who was based there named Harry Schwarz went on a scuba diving trip with some of his buddies. He had a book bag along into which he put his I.D., credit cards and $295 in cash. The bag fell overboard and they could do nothing to retrieve it.
Along came the oil spill and by then the bag had all but been forgotten. Enter now a Louisiana wildlife officer who just recently had been called upon to walk the beach at Whiskey Island and locate any birds which were covered with oil. The officer noticed something half buried in the sand and dug it out. It was the very same bag.
Somehow the bag had managed to waft its way nearly 1,250 miles from Cuba to where it was found in Louisiana. The best part is everything was intact and sent back to Schwarz who is now home in North Carolina. Hey dude…here’s your money back. Wow!
Not a toy
I had the chance to visit a super nice gun range this past weekend. It is an outdoor facility which features a variety of pistol and rifle stands as well as a shotgun range complete with automatic clay bird throwers and a set up for sporting clays.
I was impressed with all the attention paid to safety and how well the range was run. Nothing is scarier than a gun going off behind your back or in any unsafe manner. Even with experienced gun hands bad things can happen when a weapon is not handled safely. Which brings me to an Orlando, Florida gun show which was held earlier this month. An off-duty Orlando policeman was walking down one of the aisles when a gun suddenly went off. It wasn’t some knucklehead customer but one of the vendors who shot a Colt .45 hand gun into the floor. He and another vendor were hit by flying bullet fragments and had to go to the hospital to stop the bleeding.
The guy said he was looking at the semi-automatic when he saw that the hammer was cocked. So he just points it at the floor and pulls the trigger! Not too bright… and this guy was supposed to know better.
Gimme that blanket
What if you were really down on your luck? You have no money, no place to stay and nothing but the clothes on your back and a blanket. You know where a soup kitchen is and you decide to sleep in the alley until it opens. How could this situation get any worse?
Two guys over in Durango, Colorado found out the hard way. They were sleeping under a blanket last Saturday night not far from the Manna Soup Kitchen on Avenida Del Sol. Somewhere around 2:30 a.m. they were awakened by an unbelievable ruckus and suddenly a bear had one of the men by the arm. Can you imagine being shaken awake and a huge animal has your arm in its mouth?
Luckily the bear bit the man through the blanket and he wasn’t seriously hurt. Authorities were called and the bear hunt soon began. Colorado Division of Wildlife officers used dogs to track the animal and shot it out of a tree about 300 yards away. According to the Durango Herald News, officers believe the blanket may have smelled of trash and the bear wanted to taste it.
Gee…all you have is a blanket and people think it stinks.
Maremma
If you have ever been chased by a dog that wanted nothing else than to bite you, I’m sure you can remember the feeling of terror as you ran. But what if you looked around and it wasn’t a German Shepherd… it was a Sheepdog?
Out in Colorado the increasing popularity of mountain biking has had an unusual result. Bikers and even hikers are coming closer and closer to areas that for years have been used by sheep ranchers. They use remote meadows for grazing their sheep and leave large dogs to guard them from predators such as mountain lions and coyotes. A typical sheep dog today is a Great Pyrenees which looks like a white St. Bernard. The trouble starts when a biker comes upon a flock of sheep and the dog considers him a bear or some kind of menace who needs attacked.
This has happened more often as of late and the American Sheep Industry Association has taken notice of the situation and has asked the state and federal government to help. Everyone agrees that the dogs are needed for protection since traps and poisons have been banned. In 2008 a pair of sheep dogs pulled a woman off her bike and mauled her to the point of 60 stitches. When the dogs were destroyed the rancher lost a quarter of his herd to predators. Law suits flew every direction.
One possible solution is the use of a different breed. Maremmas are about the same size as a Great Pyrenees and love to guard sheep but they recognize humans as a nuisance rather than a threat and stay away from them. Good idea and I kind of agree.
Gonna get you!
Venice, Florida sits right on the Gulf Coast south of St. Petersburg. Last week 14-year old Koral Wira was out for a day of fishing with her family. What happened next is something out of a horror movie. They were just drifting along when a nearly 4 foot long barracuda jumped in the boat and sank its teeth into Koral’s arm!
According to the Sarasota Herald Tribune the young girl had lacerations from her elbow down to her wrist. Koral’s mother told the paper,” It was like out of Jaws, it was that scary. We’ll never go back out there again. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been through. I’ve never been so scared in my life.” Koral was taken to a Venice Medical center where she received 51 stitches. The family had been fishing for sharks and barracuda and Koral’s father had just hooked the fish before it jumped in the boat. He said there was so much blood in the boat it looked like a crime scene. He finally killed the fish with a knife.
Even though the fish looks dangerous, barracuda attacks are not common. Just don’t try to tell that to Koral.
