Yet another fish story.

My good friend John Gammell took me under his wing and decided to show me the finer points of shark fishing from the beach. On the first night I was a good student and just observed John in action. He did pretty well; caught two sharks, one of which was about four foot long. I took note of the tackle he was using and stocked up the next day. Rosie went out and caught some fresh bait for us so it looked like we were all set. We went to the beach and got everything set up and waited for some action. I caught a decent sized blue fish and on the advice of my mentor chunked it up for bait. By this time it was getting dark and we had glow sticks hanging from the end of our poles so we could see if we got any bites. Sure enough (John told me that the bluefish would be great bait) I noticed my glow stick bouncing up and down ( a good thing or so I thought). The next thing I saw was my pole holder being ripped out of the sand and my pole was laying on the beach about twenty yards away. I made a dash towards the pole but it was moving  towards the water. Of course I tripped and fell landing just inches from my pole as it slid closer to the water. I laid there sandy and wet and grabbed for the still moving pole, missing it by less than an inch. At this point my pole entered the water and it was decision time. I knew that the water got deep relatively quickly but if I dove for it now I could get my pole. After quickly thinking about a ticked off shark on the other end of my pole and my cell phone I decided to give up and helplessly watch my pole get pulled into the gulf of Mexico. I'm guessing John has a lot more teaching to do. Can’t help but wonder how big that shark was.