A Stingray Stabbing

The ray that got my Pa

Well, Dad took a stingray barb to the top of his foot. We'd hunted the Intercoastal around Ft. Pierce for much of last Wednesday morning, determined to arrow a trophy ray without much success. Freshwater runoff had killed water clarity, even in areas where during high tide clean ocean water usually makes the waterway crystal clear. The majority of rays were either pushed out or just very difficult to see.

We'd spotted a couple smaller rays south of the South Bridge but none were any bigger than what I've arrowed in the past. I wanted a big one for glory, to try the meat, and to donate some parts thereof to the shark fishermen staying at our place in Vero Beach. So with that particular mindset, I'd let the runts escape.

Anyway, we'd pushed further north to where we'd seen big rays before, but the flats were damn near black because of the runoff from Lake Okeechobee. It's a common occurrence right now. With all the heavy rains this summer, inland freshwater was being discharged from Taylor Creek into the Ft. Pierce area. With Lake O's water levels so high, there's fear of the dikes around it collapsing and flooding surrounding areas. As such, they drain the lake as needed - or as determined by an even more murky source.

The effect on the East Coast has been profound. It's quite a sight to see water hyacinths float out into the Atlantic; nothing I've witnessed in 30 years of fishing here. I hear it's worse further down the coast where sugar cane byproduct has not only darkened the water but created an abundance of green slime that has been strangling the coast.

But back to bowfishing, we searched this flat where we'd encountered many large rays in the past. I was dismayed by the elements and time was running out as we'd be picking up Mom and the kids in about an hour for a beer cruise.

Well, wouldn't you know it, even in the compromised visibility, we passed right over top of the specimen we'd been hunting. I released the arrow and the fight was on.

This was easily the biggest fish I've shot with bowfishing gear. Other rays have buried in the sand and it became a heave-ho ordeal - this boy charted towards deeper waters in a hurry. We'd retrieve as much line as possible, then it'd spit back out of the AMS reel, causing Dad to engage the boat and track it down. It was a solid 15 minute ordeal in the early morning Florida August heat and humidity.

A close up of the barb and its shadow

But we're tough guys. After two last runs - one that almost got the ray wrapped around the prop -  the 50-60 lb. fish played out. Dad gaffed him on board and that dangerous tail whipped around like an unattended fire hose, a 10-inch blade of a spine as menacing as a pit viper ready to strike.

Unlike vipers, stingray's poison is not too dangerous if attended to quickly. The pain can be severe for a few hours and parts of the spine often break off and may cause infection. Outside of the legend of Steve Irwin, stings usually are not fatal. Hot water is a well-known home remedy to break down the poisons followed by medical treatment.

The stingray calmed down for a moment as I got my pictures and removed the arrow. His wounds were superficial, but I still wanted pieces of him. How we were getting the flat fish into the ice boxes was another problem you can rightly blame on poor planning, especially with the kids soon to be on board. A live-wire ray and twin two-year olds could be cause for a state investigation. But as I maneuvered him around the back of the boat contemplating its fate, Dad swore out loud profanity that is probably still audible in certain corners of the Indian River.

We're not real sure how it happened. Dad felt he was well clear of the ray and I was pulling it in the opposite direction of where he stood. The next thing he felt was the end of that barb gouging him where the ankle meets the foot. I guess that's the risk of having a beast with a 36-inch prehensile tail with a boot knife attached to it slapping around the back of a 25-foot Aquasport.

Almost instantly, there was blood everywhere, all over the gunnels, fish boxes - it looked like his foot exploded. The ray bled far less and, with a far larger issue at hand, was immediately heaved back into the water where he revived and blasted away into the murk.

Having never treated a stingray stab, I instantly consulted the Interweb on my iPhone, which, by the way, should you land on this site seeking medical advice in such an emergency, my lawyers advise me to say: GO TO THE HOSPITAL.

Now, my father would prefer to cut off his own mangled foot - and possibly leg - than be treated in any medical facility. He applied pressure to stop the bleeding and kept it elevated. Without a jug or pot or bota bag of hot water aboard, I instructed him to say something if he felt nauseous or dizzy. If the wound started to smell funny we'd need to hit a hospital by helicopter. Of course, his feet always smell a little bad, the heat was stifling and would make an uninjured person nauseous and dizzy, so these were all tough calls. He decided to ride it out, pick up the rest of the family and continue as planned.

Today, the doctors took his foot..nah, he and his foot survived. Though the barb did not break off in his foot, he concurred the pain was indeed intense for a couple of hours. He also did not take the full dosage of the barb, just an inch or so. But between keeping it clean with Hydrogen Peroxide, Neosporine , bandages and bourbon, he came through just fine.

A stingray boo-boo

Me? Well, I feel slight pains of guilt but primarily from releasing an injured stingray. I view Dad's incident as another useless casualty in the pursuit of glory. I told him we could probably shut down the stingray program for a couple years or until his nightmares subside, though I still want to try the meat one day. And possibly find one bigger.

It's safe to assume he won't be clamoring to go gator hunting with me this year.

Chasing the Convict Fish

Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. Give a man a bowfishing set and puddle him into Amanda Bynes, I swear to God.

Case in point, I missed the same damn gar four or five times Sunday morning. Once, I was even able to glance the arrow off the edge of the concrete dock, shattering my confidence but, luckily, not my arrow. Each ploink in the water, the gar lazily flitted further under the dock, taunting me. It was just about enough for me to bleach my hair, pierce my face, and indulge in heavy narcotics.

In all reality, I should have taken my hostilities out on the few dozen stingrays in the shallows and stacked them up like silver dollar pancakes, but it just didn't seem sporting enough, especially when I was supposed to be helping clean up the river house to rent this summer. If a kill was to be made, it needed to be impressive enough to absorb the verbal beating that would surely ensue for taking a Union Break. The gar just narrowly fit in that category.

One of my first sheepshead when times were easier. Before bowfishing.

Which brings us to the sheepshead, the Ol' Convict Fish. The sheepshead is one of those fish, if you're a real sportsman, you typically don't target between the ages of 13 and When You Have Kids. Don't get me wrong – they are fun sport on rod and reel and delicious, to boot, but it is the equivalent of rabbit hunting. Grander plans hop in the way of a good time, at times.

I've caught, I don't know, hundreds in my youth and hadn't given them much thought since then until I got my PSE Kingfisher a couple Christmases ago and started marching down the list of legal fish I could conquer with a bow. Actually, “conquer” may be too strong of a term given my aptitude with a bow, or lack thereof. In the last 2 ½ years, I've shot at dozens. I can accurately describe to you with mouth noises what my arrow sounds like when it misses a sheepshead.

What makes them such attractive quarry – aside from their excellent table-fare and prison-uni stripes – is their ability to hang around just long enough to make you think you have a chance. They have a tendency to hang in the shallows and feed along seawalls and pilings, stripping them free of barnacles with their creepy baby teeth. They are slab-sided and appear dim-witted, but once you make eye contact and start to anchor your bow, they are gone in a flash leaving you with desperate, flailing shots at where the fish was a split-second earlier, sort of how I've always felt about trying to hit a baseball. It's frustrating. 

So I was caught in this cat-and-mouse game with a fairly large sheepster on Sunday. In between gar misses, I'd catch him under the boat house, or at the end of the dock. In all reality, it could have been different fish, but as a trophy hunter, I believed I was after The One, heroically engaged in a Battle Royale of wits with what amounts to an over-sized panfish. Each time I thought I'd have a shot, he'd spook, either from my shadow or movement or wife yelling at me to help her move some piece of heavy furniture.

Time was running out. As I was making my last stalk along the water's edge, I notice the blue-gray tail of homeboy sticking out from under the dock, high in the surface column as he grazed on the piling. I pulled back the bow and gangster-leaned to the side and plugged him without him knowing I was even there. I reeled him out of the water and hauled him to my wife for her to admire, pleading, of course, for her to put down the box of family heirlooms and grab my camera.

EPILOGUE

I snuck back out and shot a mullet, too.  

Cuda Dreams, Mullet Reality - East Coast Bowfishing

The plan was easy enough – arrow a barracuda. Maybe not the smartest plan in the world but a challenge that no one I know has attempted. The idea was to visit a buoy south of Ft. Pierce Inlet where local fisherman stop to sabiki sardines and threadfins for the more serious business of offshore fishing. It is also here where the barracuda lounge around, eating at leisure on the hapless bait and the foraging bonito, jacks and assortment of other piscine predators there to fill their stomachs, as well. It’s 25-30 feet deep here, but if there’s not a lot of boat traffic, the cuda will tread near the surface, tail fins often poking out of the water. Over the years we’ve seen real leviathans, and I wanted to stick one badly.

But apparently Tuesday, August 2nd was a holiday I was unaware of as there was a merry band of boaters on the water. 6 or 7 boats peddled around the buoy trying to fill their livewells. Another 3 or 4 boats were on a plane in that direction. This did not bode well for the prospects of lazy barracuda and easy targets.

We could have maneuvered our way into the mix, but I was downright hostile to the idea. One, I don’t like people stuck all up in my beeswax. There’s every reason to believe I was the first ever who’d visited the buoy with a bow and arrow. Fishermen are a curious bunch, and I didn’t care to repeatedly explain myself. The activity is perfectly legal, but you never know when an ignorant angler may call the law and have to deal with that hassle.

Next, barracuda have this terrible habit of leaping out of the water when hooked by standard fishing tackle. There may be Minnesota-Americans reading this who don’t have a clear concept of what a barracuda is – once it leaves the water, it is a wayward rocket with teeth that clips serious holes into whatever it hits. Occasionally you’ll read stories of one jumping randomly in a boat and chewing up its crew, but more often than not, it’s a hooked fish darting into the cockpit that tears people up. So arrowing one amidst a bunch of boats had the potential for a sad, litigious ending.

Dad and I tossed out a couple spoons and trolled the area for mackerel, without luck, until the boats cleared away. Immediately I could tell the fish were spooked. They were down deep in the crystal water and showed no signs of rising. Oh, we saw plenty – schools in fact, some fish that’d probably hit the 30 pound mark. I did tag one in the side with an arrow - I was more surprised by it than he was - but at the depth he was cruising, the arrow harmlessly bounced off and he sped away.

So we pulled out the SWAT tactics. Dad would cast a surface plug and retrieved it as fast as he could. Cuda love chasing fast-moving lures. And they did, but still stayed deep. The next trick was to rig up the sabikis and try to lure the barracuda alongside the boat with fresh bait. For those of you who don’t know, a sabiki rigs is a gangline of five to six small gold hooks with little white “wings” that you attach a weight to and jig through schools of bait. The baitfish attack the miniscule lures, and it’s a pretty effective manner of filling a livewell with frisky baits. We had one sabiki rig. On the first cast, I hooked into four or five scaled sardines.

Annnnddddd, the line broke sending the rig and baitfish into the Locker.

I was flabbergasted as the clown music was now blaring loudly. Foolishly I expected easy and planned accordingly. This cuda thing just wasn’t going to work out today and the August heat was cranking up. Dad mentioned a grassflat in the Indian River he had fished the previous day filled with mullet. Mullet are on the other end of the spectrum of dangerous game, but I am sure in the annals of African safaris, some lion hunter frustrated with his ill-fated pursuit, soothed his irritations on a herd of impala or dik-dik. So, we left the blue of the Atlantic to head to emerald green of the Intercoastal.

Dad was right. There were plenty of mullet. Also stingrays.

I’m on the fence about stingrays. They are tailor-made for bowfishing. But, what to do with them? Their only real purpose on Earth is to feed sharks, but that still is not enough reason to shoot one. And these were big rays – 30-40 pound rays. I’ve caught enough on rod and reel to know that, unless I brained the fish, it would be a struggle to get it to the boat with what little line I had in the AMS. This is in extreme violation of the fisherman’s affliction with reeling in the Big Catch, but I could log no ethical reason to pop these slow-moving flat fish. Then again, I didn’t have much reason to shoot barracuda either. Silly how ethics works sometimes.

The other frustrating fish were the snook. It is highly illegal – as in, BBQ a bald eagle illegal – to spear snook. And it was out of season. And most of them we saw were over slot size. But linesider after linesider drifted by the boat as I perched near the center console awaiting passing schools of mullet. They’d given me the electric chair had I pegged the 20-pounder that hung off the transom, eying me, almost Triple Dog Daring me to shoot.

Mullet it would be. I shot three in about 200 shots. Two were intentionally shot; the smallest I flock-shot. So, I didn’t bag the biggest fish in the seas.

But unlike stingrays and cuda, mullet do nicely translate into this: