If you’ve seen “Jaws” — and really, who hasn’t seen “Jaws” — you get it when I say, “It’s all psychological. You yell ‘Barracuda,’ everybody says, ‘Huh? What?’ You yell ‘Shark,’ we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.”
I’m not encouraging anyone to yell “Shark” on Chappy or anywhere else, but if you heard someone talking about sharks on Chappy during the last two weeks, it’s most likely because the sharks have arrived, and they’re not the ones playing baseball at the high school.
Two Sundays ago, I was on Chappy with friends. Paula Sullivan and I left the group to take a walk in search of fish. We carried our rods past the Rip and onward a bit toward the breach. We passed a group of seven or eight college-age young men who were swimming and splashing and having a great time.
We cast for a bit, chatted, reeled in nothing, cast more, chatted more. We saw a large seal swim by and used that as our excuse for not catching any fish. A couple of minutes after we spotted the seal, we heard a little commotion down the shore from the guys in the water. They were running out, grabbing phones, and standing on the beach, not even toes in the water. I looked at Paula and said, “I wonder if there was a shark chasing that seal.”
Sure enough, when I walked back past the young men, they asked if I’d seen the shark. I told them we hadn’t but assured them plenty of sharks would be swimming close to shore over the next few months. They didn’t return to the water.
Since then, people have been reeling as fast as they could to land a fish before a shark grabbed it off a hook, or caught sharks whether they wanted to or not. Capt. Sandy Fisher was out on a charter with a family from New Hampshire last week, fishing off East Beach looking for bluefish and stripers, when a first-time teenage fisherman got the catch of her lifetime.
“I’d been out on the Friday before, and we were on schools of blues and bass. The bluefish were decent, six to 10 pounds. [On Wednesday], we weren’t catching much. My friend suggested a deep diver. There was a lot of weed, but we put an X-Rap 30 on. The rod goes off, and the girl is on her first fish. She fought it for 20 minutes. A shark. It was epic!” said Sandy.
They brought the shark on the boat through the tuna door, unhooked him, and released it back into the water. Though Sandy has had numerous sharks take lures, that shark on the boat was a first. “We hook up all the time on X-Raps when we’re around Nantucket. Normally the shark rips the lure off. This was the first time ever getting one on the boat,” said Sandy.
I thought Sandy’s shark story was great, but I was thrilled when I learned that 9-year-old Lukas Thompson had landed his first shark. I’ve known Lukas since he was 5, so seeing a picture of him with a shark brought a shout of joy from me.
Lukey went out to Chappy with his cousin Bobby Ball, his friend Charlie Huckins, and Charlie’s dad. Bobby works at Mad Martha’s making ice cream, as in 700 buckets of ice cream a week in the summer. When Bobby’s not making our favorite flavors of summer’s No. 1 dessert, he’s out fishing.
“I go out as often as I can, every morning or night that the weather looks good,” said Bobby. “I really like the sharks. There’s so much to it. When you pull in something that weighs as much as you, it’s just cool.”
“Every time Lukey goes fishing, he goes with Bobby,” said Lukey’s mom, Jasmine.
“I’ve taken Lukey fishing for years. Started him catching scup. This year, he was big enough to try for a shark,” said Bobby.
Lukey turned 9 only days before his first shark outing. “I had three rods out,” said Bobby. “One with eel, one with mackerel, and one with squid. We had a barbecue and were playing cornhole waiting for the rods to go off. I told the boys, ‘The sharks are as big as you are, so be ready for it.’”
Lukey was definitely ready when the rod bent. “It was exciting,” said Lukey, who reeled and reeled with his friend Charlie until the shark was almost to shore and Bobby grabbed the leader. “It was as big as me.”
“They got it in,” said Bobby. “It’s probably the coolest thing they’ve ever seen.”
Lukey, Bobby, and friends had a fun night on the beach. “We caught two sharks at the same time. The rods went off for the fourth and fifth sharks at the same time. We would’ve caught eight sharks if they didn’t get away,” said Lukey.
“It’s fun to bring someone like Lukey and have him land his first shark. By the third shark, he was out of energy. On the car ride home, he fell asleep. It’s cool to have been part of that. He’ll remember this forever,” said Bobby.
I hope to see you on the beach, and I hope we’re creating memories that we’ll remember forever.