Shark+Fly

This is only the beginning of something that’s bound to leave a mark for ever in my fly fishing life. This week-end, I was in Normandie with my friend Flavien Malemprée, and the plan was to go fishing for porbeagle sharks. And we went. Flysharking, as I like to call that rather odd endeavour, is very glamour when you talk about it to your (girl) friends in a café downtown, and makes you in advance a kind of adventurous maverick going for modern times adventures — with a fly rod. Details, as it often is the case, are a little less glamour. Preparing the chum is well on the wrong side of the ugly, then the action consists basically in doing nothing while all those smelly fish particles and oils advertise your shark open-bar operation. You have to believe.

But then, out of the blue (literally) comes the mighty predator. All the seven-plus feet of it, slowly gliding around the boat. And it’s at least as much there to get you than you’re there to get it. I’ve never experienced something like that. The awe. The respect for this fish. Flavien didn’t waste a fraction of a second to think, he jumped on his rod and tried to get the shark to take his streamer. The shark came to have a look (as Flavien neared a cardivascular incident) then went back to the depths. We never saw it again this day.

That’s it for our first try. But we’ll be back, and we know it as a fact: sooner or later we’ll hook one. And all hell will break loose.