Shark Fishing Aransas Bay
A cadaverous gray dorsal fin cut through the storm cloud dark water. It sliced forward and through the glass-smooth surface then slipped below and out of sight with barely a ripple to show for its existence.
"Is that shark?" My friend Will asked of Texas Bills & Gills Guide Service owner and operator Captain Dalton Cruse.
"No sir. Dolphin. Sharks rarely show their dorsal fins above water. Not out here at least."
"They do in all the Jaws movies," Will laughed.
"Yeah," Dalton snickered. "Only in the movies."
I wasn't in a movie, rather I was in Aransas Bay with friends Will Crowe and Joel O’Shoney under the direction of our hired captain. We were after shark and had just unleashed one dead mullet and one dead skipjack into the drink in the hope of enticing the bay’s apex predator to bite. Although I had fished with Dalton's father Capt. Donny yearly for almost two decades I had only fished with Dalton once before. He did a fantastic job then and was doing a great job getting us ready for shark. This came as no surprise as Dalton had been learning from his father for over 24 years before becoming a professional five years ago.
We unschooled the baits to near 300 yards from the boat and let them drift in the strike zone, an area where the dirty water meets clean thanks to the currents and wind. Being an ambush predator, sharks cruise the edge of the cloudy water then strike outward toward unsuspecting prey. The first predator we saw however was an alligator gar which broke the water's surface some 40 yards from our boat. Capt. Dalton put the prehistoric fish at about five foot in length and remarked that despite being mostly associated with freshwater, larger alligator gar often venture into the saltwater bay to hunt.
The clicker on the aft reel suddenly screamed. I lunged for the rod only to reach it just as the metallic catches ceased. Something had liked the dead mullet on the other end of the line but not enough to keep it in its mouth. An hour passed before anything other than my sweating or horseflies biting my ankles happened. The clicker on the forward rod ticked slowly then hammered in quick succession. I pulled the rod from its holder, made ready, then almost fell backward as the 80-pound braid line in the drink snapped. I reeled in what remained of the line. Capt. Dalton inspected it and mused, "takes a big one to rip a line like that."
We reeled in the remaining bait then moved to another area just off Mud Island. Again, we targeted where the waters meet and had our first strike. I fought the good fight for roughly 10 minutes and was rewarded with a small blacktip shark that measured just over three foot and weighed almost 60 pounds. We released the predator then tried again. An hour later Joel pulled a four-foot, 80-pound blacktip from the bay. Roughly 40 minutes after that Will pulled a four foot 65-pound blacktip from the waters. An hour after that I pulled our last catch of the day from the drink. That four foot, 60-pound blacktip put up a fight that saw him completely breach the waters three times. Will, Joel, and I kept that last shark for steaks, packed him on ice, and bid Dalton a good afternoon. The three of us would see him bright and early the next morning as our plan was to head out early for drum and redfish.
Reach Captain Dalton Cruse HERE
This piece first appeared in the Fredericksburg Standard.
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