By: Bud Alexis
When the line went slack I knew I was in trouble. Three people already had been attacked and bitten by sharks in this area, and I had about 50 yards to swim back to shore. Anticipating any moment the feeling of the shark’s teeth sinking into my body, I swam for my life.
With quite a few shark sightings, several being caught, and the fact that several shark attacks had occurred in Lake Pontchartrain Louisiana, the thought of catching one set my mind for a shark catching adventure. As you can tell by my stories, life for me was never boring. As it turns out, I must have a specially appointed angel to watch over me.
It was a warm, maybe considered hot, evening when four of us arrived at the sea wall along Lake Pontchartrain. My uncle and three of us teenagers set about the task of preparing the fishing tackle. This consisted of about 200 lb test line with a steel leader and a very large hook. It was baited with a chunk of bloody meat weighing about one and a half pounds. The line was thrown out as far as possible out into the lake.
With all the preparations made, and the line set, all that was left was the wait. About an hour and a half later the line stretched and we became very excited. We didn’t know what we had hooked, but we knew that it was big. It took out all the line and we couldn’t make any headway trying to pull the line in. We had known of gar fish up to 20 feet long being caught as well as sharks. It didn’t matter to us, we just knew it was big.
We had about 50 yards of line stretched out. Whatever it was, it swam as far as it could to the left and then back to the right. We were aware of old concrete slabs dumped into the lake and were hoping we would not get snagged on one of them. You guessed it! We got snagged.
As you probably know, sometimes teenagers do not reason very well. We didn’t want to lose our line so one of us would have to go out and unsnag it. No one was feeling very brave at this time as you could hear each one mumble, “Not me!” So we decided to do the only democratic thing to do–draw straws. The short straw being the victim. To this day I think I was conned.
Of course as a teenager I couldn’t let on that I was a coward. What would my peers think. It was a matter of pride or maybe stupidity, which ever comes first. I eased my way into the water line in hand. The water was almost chest deep, so I waded and followed the line for a short way and begin slowly swimming. As I approached the area of the concrete blocks, I became very apprehensive. On the outside, I may have appeared cool, calm and collected, but on the inside I was in sheer terror. As I swam directly above the area of the snag the line suddenly went slack. I had about 50 yards to swim back to shore while anticipating the sharks teeth sinking into my body. I swam for my life.
The attack never came. I believe I broke the world’s swimming record for that 50 yards. Whatever was on the line must have gotten off, but at that moment it didn’t matter. I was just relieved to be safe. I did a lot of dumb things as a teenager, but I do believe this had to be ahead of whatever was in second place.
