My Fishing Lure

Fishing was always a fun nighttime activity on the Atlantis II. When we were in transit the crew always had trolling lines out but at night when the sub was back on deck it was rod and reel or hand line.
One night the ship's lights had attracted a school of bonito. All you had to have was a shiny lure and you were certain of getting lots of strikes. I had brought a rod with me when we left Woods Hole with a handful of lures, and the ship kept 3 or 4 rods around for general use. Soon enough we had 4 or 5 of us snagging fish.
When you hooked one of these bonito, it would dive, trying to get away and put up a good fight. Lurking beneath the bonito was a school of sharks that would see them in distress, diving out of the crowd and bang! All of a sudden the small fish you had turned into a big one. We wound up catching a lot of bonito heads.
We had a rather colorful deck hand, Fresno Bob, who would collect these fish heads and put them on a big shark hook that he lowered over the side with a stout hand line.
Let me say a few words here about Fresno Bob. He was a huge man and fairly fat but with lots of muscle. He stood about 6'2" and well over 350lbs. Heavily tattooed(not quite as popular then as now), Bob had 'biker' written all over him. As it turned out, Bob had been in a violent run-in with the Bandito biker gang in Bakersfield, CA and took the job of deck hand to lay low until some bad blood blew over. I always thought he was a kind of gentle giant with a great sense of humor. We used to shoot the shit over beers at night and I thought him to be intelligent and well read. We had a similar taste in music. I never thought he would hurt a fly... that is, until he brought that shark on board.
I had caught a number of fish and several times just heads. My last lure was gone so I put my rod aside and was having a beer when Fresno Bob brought up a 5' mako shark. A wicked looking thing that was thrashing around on deck. I guess Bob wasn't happy about that, thinking he might get bitten, so he picked up a 6' piece of 2x4 and started beating this shark about the head. It was an awesome and impressive sight! I knew then that making Fresno Bob mad would be a grave mistake and that maybe some of the stories about the trouble in Bakersfield might have some truth in them. Bob showed an impressive amount of energy but that shark was tough! After a while Bob gave up on that 2x4 and went to his room to get the machete he had picked up in Panama. I had bought one too but Bob had spent some time honing the edge, sharpening it considerably. With sparks flying from the blade as it struck the deck, it took Bob about 20 massive swings to sever that mako's head. An awe inspiring sight. After all of the shark pieces stopped moving he slit open the beast's stomach and out popped several bonito, including one with my lure in its mouth!
I scooped it up and re-rigged my rod to catch a couple more fish. All in all a good night. We had fresh bonito for days and the mako was delicious as well.