These Kayak Guys Are Frickin’ Nuts!

Gotta say I kinda do want to try the saltwater big game fishing from a kayak thing. Going on a sleigh ride sounds fun…until I think of sharks. I’m all in for risk, but gambling is another story.

Hopefully after reading this you fellow bassers won’t be tempted to do something crazy this weekend…. Check it, from here:

> Jack Donlon calls his shark-fishing tournament the “Are You Man Enough? Shark Challenge.”

> It takes a certain kind of person to hop into a boat and go hunting for sharks. And it takes quite another to do it from a kayak.

> “We just like the challenge,” explains Bob Bramblet, 44, of Bonita Springs. “Obviously, there’s always the potential that the shark will be bigger than your kayak. “So there’s that element of danger.”

> An estimated 200-300 people will compete in the Shark Challenge, journeying out into the Gulf of Mexico to catch as many sharks as they can in 2 days. They’ll compete for about $15,000 in prizes.

[This is the part that is really nuts.]

> As they reel in hammerheads, bull sharks and other sharks, each four-member crew whips out cellphones and shoots video of the action. Then they email the footage to festival organizers, who quickly edit it and show it on the 9-foot-by-12-foot LCD TV screen (aka, “The SharkTron”).

> Each shark has to be at least 4 feet long to qualify. In the past, some of the tournament’s biggest sharks have included an 11-foot hammerhead [cut the line!] and a 12-foot, 8-inch lemon shark.

> “The shark is usually pulling you around for a while until it gets tired,” Bramblet says. “Sometimes it takes 20 minutes. Sometimes it takes an hour or more. We call it a southwest Florida sleigh ride.”