A battle over what’s for dinner: Shelter Islander and shark fight over a bluefish

While headed home from Connecticut recently, I saw a cloud of birds with breaking fish underneath.

I cast a popper and quickly hooked what felt like a big fish — for me, at least, a really big fish. Usually, I can land a large blue in 5 minutes. Not this fish.

For 20 minutes I drifted with the tide as the fish made several runs. Finally, I was able to get the fish within 30 yards of the boat.

At this point, I saw it jump and then some thrashing in the water, and the brown side of something about 4-feet long and slender. I may have seen a fin. The fish I was fighting then became dead weight, which I hauled in.

That dead weight was the head of the biggest bluefish I have ever caught.

What happened? I think the bluefish was weakened by its fight with me, and a shark saw an easy meal. Maybe the victor was a seal, but that doesn’t match the long slender body I saw, nor teeth marks (see the picture near my right hand).

We think we are so powerful with our sophisticated equipment and fast boats. But there are other apex predators at the top of a food chain in the sea that can snatch our quarry with nothing but their teeth and raw speed.

I respect the shark who took my dinner and the blues who have survived long enough to become so large.

I’ll keep trying to catch my dinner, but nothing more.