Friday night after we were moored to the buoy , had a cocktail and shook off 119 miles of Gulf chop . We lite up the water and rigged for some free line on top .
Right out of the box Barry hooked one , unfortunately it was a small black tip shark , O' well no problem as we have to handle sharks often ,
On with the story , We saw him a few minutes later a little 3 1/2 footer. I was not really ready to go in with my bait so I helped Barry get this thing off the boat , In his usual fashion , he grabbed his tail and brought him in the boat to the deck and let him settle down, while on the deck he quickly grabbed him behind the head and picked it up and put the body between his legs holding the head in a powerful grip , He was going to remove the hook that was in the corner rear of the jaws , this is an easy task and have seen Barry do this many times ,
What happened next is why I mentioned the risks involved in this deep sea fishing gig . Always remember this You "are" part of the food chain when you are in the ocean.
As I was watching him handle the shark , only one person at a time while releasing sharks as they thrash around during there short stay on the boat, I decided to grab the Nikon and get a shot of him doing this dangerous and skillful operation ,as I turned to grab the camera I heard him say calmly
"damn he bit me" .He thought that the hook would remove easily and not need the fish pliers !
I quickly grabbed the fish tool and got the hook out and Barry dumped him over the side .
It was dark and Barry had an injury that most folks would have had Coast Guard fly them out , but ya know how them iron worker are , and to him it was just a scratch , but in the real world it was very deep and ragged trashing to his forefinger on his right hand, the top 3/4 of his finger was badly ripped and down to the bone and bleeding everywhere .
I got the first aid kit and got to patching him back up , got the bleeding under control in about 20 minutes, sterilized the wound , cut away some mangled skin ,more alcohol., triple antibiotic cream , sterile dressing ,and a tight wrapping of electric tape to control the bleeding ,
20 minutes later we removed the first dressing and repeated it again but let up on the pressure on the re wrap with the electrical tape so blood still flowed to the finger , he laid down in the cabin with his hand above his heart for another hour or so , By this time fishing was still on our minds just could not do it , He was in a lot of pain and I was worried about bacteria and infection from the bite ,
Exhausted from the trip out and my captain shark bit all we could do was try and get some sleep and deal with it in the morning . by now it was getting close to the midnight hour.
During the night a couple more boats arrived to tie off , one fishing boat , one dive boat.
Barry finger the next morning to my surprise was not swelling , was able to move it (with a great deal of pain) and seamed no worse than last night , and that's a good thing , We dressed it again and waterproofed it good with the electric tape and we were fishing by 7:15 am Saturday
We fished hard for 13 straight hours on Saturday , that's hard core !!!
The last picture I took Friday evening before all hell broke loose.
This boat arrived around 3:00 am.
The dive boat arrived at 6:30 am.
A barracuda on deck and going back after this pic,
Hard to keep a good man down , notice the brown tape on his reel hand !
Digging hard on this big boy.
This is why we go deep !
It's about the battle !
And the rewards are great , Barry got a 50 pound AJ (amber jack)
This shot of me on a big boy that took 40 minutes to bring off the bottom . the rest of the story tomorrow and the fish I'm on will be impressive on the boat.
The first day was not so out of the ordinary , ya just have to remember to stay cool under difficult situations and not loose faith in you friend's and equipment ,carry the right supplies ,and use common sense when dealing with an emergency.
Barry's finger is healing quickly , but very painful.
and that's the way it is !
cheers!
.bb
Jealous! I have wanted to catch Amber Jack for a long while. All we got were mostly Reds.
ReplyDeleteFishing in the wrong place.
Sure glad it happened to a tough guy like Barry. Boy Scout motto "Be Prepared". And you guys were!!!
Oh my, glad I was not there or I would of freaked, don't do well with cuts or blood. That could of been dangerous.
ReplyDeleteDid he at least go see a doctor?
TexasMan ,
ReplyDeleteyea them AJ's can really beat ya ,we got broke off , Barry 3 and myself twice , pretty sure they were AJ's , was throwing out blue runners for bait,
thanks for the be prepared motto ,some folks don't get it ! when you do this kind of thing for the fun of it , you still have to be able to deal with any thing that may come your way.
MsBelinda
No you would not have done well from what you said , there was a lot of blood and guts flying Friday night and let me tell ya , try this while you still got 2 to 3 foot seas on top of everthing I was dealing with to begine with , was a little nervious after the fact myself , but mananged to stay composied under the conditions the Lord had delt us! As I knew he was there with us every moment !!!
cheers !
.bb