Awindow of settled weather allows Dave Lewis to get offshore in search of blue sharks where his faith in the power of fish oil is finally rewarded
Field of Dreams is a 1989 American sports fantasy drama starring Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella, a struggling farmer from Dyersville, Iowa. A devoted baseball fan, Kinsella fears growing old without achieving anything and while walking through his cornfield one evening he hears a voice whispering, “If you build it, he will come.” He sees a vision of a baseball diamond in the cornfield, along with the ghost of legendary Chicago White Sox outfielder ‘Shoeless Joe Jackson’ standing in the middle. Believing in him, and despite the risk of financial hardship, his wife, Annie, lets him plow under part of their corn crop to build a baseball field. At first nothing happens but eventually Kinsella’s patience and faith pay off, when the newly created baseball field attracts the ghosts of several baseball legends who play a game. It’s a great film, but what on earth has this got to do with fishing you are no doubt asking yourselves: read on!
It was one of these trips nobody really expected to go ahead. July and August saw a near continual succession of low-pressure systems along with their associated fronts tracking their way across the Atlantic, before buffeting the British Isles. It may well have been the peak of the offshore summer fishing season around much of the coast, but at most ports cancelled trips had become very much the norm rather than the exception. One charter skipper I spoke to only managed to fish six days out of a full diary of 31 bookings in July.
Our day, targeting sharks off the Welsh coast, had been booked for mid-August. As the day drew ever nearer almost half-heartedly I had kept an eye on the various weather sites I follow, as I said, I was not really expecting anything other than yet another cancellation. Then, somewhat miraculously, a week or so before the trip a brief widening of the usual tightly packed isobars appeared to offer a glimmer of hope, but would it last? Unbelievably it did. A small ridge of high pressure sandwiched between two deep lows moved in, its arrival coinciding perfectly with our trip.
We were booked to fish with Rob Rennie, skipper of Milford Haven based charter boat ‘Lady Jen-The Celtic Wildcat’ and it was something of a special day. Afull day offshore into old onion sacks or some other suitable container, which is suspended over the side allowing the contents to steadily leach out into the tide. As the boat drifts it leaves an enticing scent trail in its wake which sharks find irresistible. I liken it to walking up the high street in the evening, then getting that first whiff of the enticing aroma wafting from a curry house ahead: irresistible!
