Have you ever wondered what it would be like to catch large fish as fast as you cast a hook to them? Anglers who have experienced fishing like this will tell you that the challenge of catching fish that come to hook that easily can get old pretty quickly. When you remove the challenge factor from the sport of fishing (or even shooting trophy animals for that matter) the “sport” can cease to be fun and become nearly as boring as some types of work.

During a blitz of big bluefish in the surf at Cape Hatteras fishermen can usually tie into these hard fighting fish as fast as they can sling a Hopkins lure to them. After landing five or six of these fish you begin to wonder if you’re having fun anymore. The same thing goes for big game anglers who tie into bluefin tuna of trophy proportions who’ve been chummed up behind the boat and are feeding ravenously on chunks of cut up menhaden. Fighting and landing one big tuna per day is about all an angler can stand.

In many cases, anglers who have become bored with taking fish turn to reducing the size of their tackle and putting the odds of landing some fish over in favor of the fish instead of the angler.

Last week, I was sitting on our porch overlooking the water and observed a fisherman who was standing on a dock a few yards from our house. For about five minutes I watched as he was obviously fighting a fish of a large size and couldn’t quite bring in to the dock close enough to land it. I went over to see just want manner of fish this guy had on his line.

The angler was a young man who’d grown up in our neighborhood and I had watched his fishing skills develop over the years as Joe Lewis brought in speckled trout and red drum of impressive proportions for my examination. These youngsters were catching fish that were putting older and more experienced fishermen to shame and they were doing it either from the bank or from canoes or kayaks and they were fishing in the shallows close by the shore. Now all grown up, Joe Lewis was again in our neighborhood visiting his grandmother and again fishing from our old neighborhood pier. Obviously Joe Lewis hadn’t lost any of his angling skills over the years.

When I asked Joe what he was fighting he replied that it was a “small” ray. I sort of wondered why he didn’t just cut his line and get the fish off his line. A lot of fishermen would have done just that instead of wasting their time fighting what they consider to be a “trash” fish. Stingrays aren’t generally considered to be game fish.

The equation of the challenge of sportfishing suddenly took on another face when Lewis told me that his lightweight-spinning reel was loaded with two-pound test line and that he intended to land the fish on this light line. Bringing in even a small stingray in with two-pound test line was indeed a challenge.

Our coastal rivers and bays have been unusually “blessed” for the past few years with huge schools of cownose rays. Fishing tournaments that are out to catch more desirable fish such as tarpon have even given the rays the name of “Pancake Tarpon” and prizes are given for catches of these Pancake Tarpon incidental to the catches of the target fish. Fishery biologists are concerned that the huge numbers of these rays in our waters are having an adverse effect on the populations of shellfish such as scallops, clams and blue crabs. Some sport fishermen such as Joe Lewis are accepting the cownose rays for what they are and treating them as a challenging fish worthy of recognition for their close-in, brute force, fighting ability. It was precisely this fighting ability that Lewis found to be a challenge on his light tackle.

I watched Lewis as he simply held on and let the ray strip off line from his spinning reel until it tired and began to use its large flat surface area to “suck” onto the bottom and stubbornly refuse to move. When this happened, Lewis simply put as much pressure as he could on the two-pound test line without breaking it and gradually convinced the fish that the pressure the hook was exerting on the inside of its mouth would decrease if the fish swam toward the dock. When the ray realized that the dock was not a safe place to be, it would again swim toward deeper water until the slight but relentless pressure from within its mouth wasn’t going to let up then it would again try to hold onto the bottom and suck.

This challenging game of a muscular, primitive fish pitted against the relentless pressure of the modern tackle and resolve of the angler continued for about another 20 minutes when Lewis finally led the exhausted fish to the edge of the dock where he reached into the fishes’ mouth and swung it over and onto the dock. Being very careful to avoid the poisonous barbed spine that lay alongside the tail of the ray Lewis then pulled the hook loose from the ray’s mouth and held it up for a photo. We estimated that the angler VS fish battle had been going on for 30 minutes.

If you’ve ever dealt with a two-pound test monofilament fishing line, you know this is a really small fishing line. Anglers have to be extra careful that the line is free of nicks and all knots in the line are precisely tied or the line will break under less than two-pound test its designed for. On the other hand, the reel to which the line is attached can be filled to capacity with many more yards of line than it would hold if a stronger line were to be used. This increased capacity for line enables the angler to let the fish struggle against the pull of the hook line and flexible fishing rod for a longer time as it attempts to swim away from its antagonist. If the angler, line and hook can out last the fish’s strength, the angler might win the struggle.

Big game offshore fishermen have used these light line tactics to fight some very impressively large marlin or tuna into submission in the ocean’s open waters where the boat can follow the fish. In these cases having the angler aboard a boat enables the angler to have another advantage over the fish. Joe Lewis was fighting the cownose ray from a set platform and did not have the boat’s advantage. Only the angler’s skill at using good tackle and his resolve in wearing the fish into submission allowed Joe Lewis to lead the fish to the dock and place it up on the dock.

We estimated the fish’s weight at 20-pounds and the two-pound test line gave a 10-to-one ratio of line size to fish’s weight. Anytime an angler can take a fish with a line to fish ratio like that tells me that there’s a lot to be said for the angler’s skill and the tackle’s quality. Accomplishments like that present a good challenge for fishermen and the challenge is what the sport of fishing’s all about. If all you want from fishing is something to eat, go to the seafood market and buy some fish. Chances are that this will save you a lot of money in the long run.

Fishing is a sport much like other sports and the challenge of accomplishing a hard to achieve goal is what sport fishing is all about