Trolling for love in all the wrong places ...
 

... but just the spot for a snack ... for a barracuda, bluefish, shark, etc. ???


http://gallery.kiteforum.com/albums/...ng_s.sized.jpg
Andy "Grasshopper" Hurdman trolls, WHY would a grasshopper do that, fish love grasshoppers!


Reality is, we all have some degree of lure to our fish headed friends. Enrique or Latino was out in some powered conditions shredding along and having a good time a couple of weeks ago. Enrique has been an FKA area coordinator in Naples, SW Florida for years and has a school, http://www.swfloridakiteboarding.com/ The wind was kind of strong so as a result he was edging hard and doing the odd hand drag leaning way over to oppose the kite force. Sounds familiar? Lots of us do it, even those of us that know better (like me!).


http://www.fksa.org/albums/album157/203_G.sized.jpg
Enrique rides in Jupiter during the 2006 Invasion


This time, things didn't quite go as planned though. Enrique was shredding hard, the next thing he realized was some intense pain in his hand. Pulling it up it was spewing blood all over the place. Whoops, best head in. Despite applying direct pressure the bleeding persisted, so he headed off to the doctor for treatment. He was likely hit by a barracuda, bluefish, permit, pompano or tons of other smaller fish that hit bait on the fly.


http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Galler...barracuda3.JPG
Lady fingers, we don't need no stinkin lady fingers, we want Enrique Fingers, yum!


George with Kiteflix.com put together a clip interviewing Enrique and showing off his bit of fish food or the pieces he was left with at the Video section at:


http://www.kiteflix.com/ on page two
under: "Something Bit Me"

Check it out.


http://www.imagequest3d.com/pages/cu...odile/q230.jpg
Good thing saltwater crocs are on the rebound.


Actually, Enrique was lucky in achieving full recovery with no loss of function or bits.

So, avoid those hand drags lest you qualify as fish food. It can be hard to resist, still visualize some fin head gnashing into or through your fingers, nerves, muscle, gristle and you get the idea. Plugs or fingers, only your doctor knows for sure, the fish sure as hell don't! Wonder if my butt is safe, don't them fish jump? Got to worry about shuffling my feet in the shallows to avoid becoming "long pig sati" for skates, sigh. It's an animal planet, avoid becoming a menu item.


http://www.fksa.org/albums/album239/...rk_cat_0YB.jpg
Damn catfish, uh cat sharks, uh, wacked out photoshop gnomes?

FKA, Inc.

transcribed by:
Rick Iossi

If I saw something like that come up at me, I would probably give up all watersports.

Seriously, if you've spend any considerable amount of time out on (or underneath) the water, you will have an encounter with some type of marine life that will cause you some pain or at least an adrenaline rush. I've been hit by those diving ducks (whatever you call them) when they came up out of the water in front of me. I've had an osprey drop a mullet he caught and almost hit me. I've had seagulls and other birds fly between my lines as well as them dumping on my kite. I've hit two sharks with my board in shallow water. They got even with me, though. I was bit by a small blacktip in the knee once when wade fishing (not really enough for it to draw much blood).

It would be interesting to see how many have had encounters of this sort.

More encounters than I can remember but here goes. There was the shark that bit me when I was 16 after only picking it up showing it around and then throwing it. No sense of humor. Quite a few unidentified airborne fish collisions. There was the permit that almost castrated me or at least I was convinced that is what he had in mind at the time. So, I had my hands full of lobster and lacking gloves used my bathing suit. Once I had my head in a hole in the reef looking around and I heard someone munching celery. Underwater? Turns out it was an aggressive Beaugregory chewing my hair? I've had barracudas hit my swim fins and stare at me after, foregoing Rick Sushi fortunately. There was a squadron of triggerfish miffed that the shrimp had run out tried out me instead several times. No turkeywing here you fish brains! I'll see if I can remember some more.

Just thought of another one. When I was in high school a good friend got a part time job at a place called the World Dolphin Foundation. They kept a pair of young dolphins in a man-made lagoon on Key Biscayne in Miami.

Something about mammals in captivity, they get bored, real bored. Being in the days before MTV and X-Box, what's a higher order mammal to do? You guessed it! It was how they did it that was intriguing. The female dolphin developed an attachment, literally, for my big toe and adjoining appendages. The male dolphin on the other hand had a thing for knees, the backside. Both would take you for a ride in their own ways and at a few mph too.

Complications set in when you had the guy pulling on one side and the girl on the other with you in the middle. Talk about getting divided by attention. This happened once when one of the dolphins though this was enough and jumped out of the water landing on us. Ouch, that is a lot of mammal to go smacking around.

Other stories out there?

Hand drags are real common in kiting. We might have to start wearing kevlar cut resistant gloves (got 'em at Home Depot). One more example appears in Still Life, a new forum on the site at:

http://fksa.org/forumdisplay.php?f=68

Other intriguing still shots out there?

Check this shark video