I went Shark fishing with YP and all I caught was Fleas

I’ve spent the summer running around the North East trying to reconnect with friends and family before heading back to China. It’s been fun but physically draining, which is why I was looking forward to spending this past weekend around my apartment doing absolutely nothing. Well, not absolutely nothing, my friend had told me about a Dipset reunion concert at Coney Island Saturday night that I had every intention of going to. However, on Saturday afternoon, around the same time my friends began bailing from the Dipset concert because despite living in New York for five years they “didn’t realize Coney Island was an hour away”, Young Pageviews hits me up with an enticing offer: Shark fishing in Cape May. Not quite willing to pull a “Trent”(going to a concert solo), I decided to accept YP’s invitation figuring I should cram in as much time with nature before returning to Smog Vegas (Shanghai).  It didn’t hurt that YP stroked my ego insisting that he “needed a shark expert on the expedition and I was the man for the job.” Just like Chris Pratt’s character in Jurassic Park, maybe I too would be able to drip sex while communicating with prehistoric beasts. It was worth a shot.

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On the drive down YP entertained me with tales from his Barstool Outdoors videos series that will be dropping in the fall. So far it’s set to feature bow fishing in Louisiana, noodling for Catfish in Alabama, a shark fishing trip in Montauk where a guy ends up almost losing an arm, and much much more. Sounds awesome if you ask me. However, our conversation took a dark turn when YP confessed to me that whenever he shares a car with our fearless leader El Pres,  Portnoy scrolls through twitter and doesn’t talk to him. Could it be that the man who was once maliciously trolled online for not having any offspring now has so many kids that members of #TeamPortnoy are starting to feel the cold shoulder of neglect? You hate to see it. YP cheered back up though as we pulled into the parking lot of WAWA to stock up on provisions for the trip.

My heart on the other hand, began to sink. For most of my adult life I’ve had tales of how incredibly amazing WaWa is pounded into my brain. However, every time I’ve gone (3 times) the experience has left me with a mild stomachache that turns into a difficult dump. While I’m willing to admit that I don’t think everyone from Philly is trash, I whole heartedly believe that everyone from Philly always feels like trash from having just eaten at WaWa.  Proponents of this convenience store chain insist that I’m just not ordering the right type of sandwich and need to “find my lane.” I think they may have a point as “my lane” on this trip to WaWa was as follows:

Turkey and gravy hoagie with
- cranberry sauce
– garlic aioli
– chipotle mayo
– jalapeno peppers
– lettuce
– onions
and a Jalapeno cream cheese stuffed pretzel as an appetizer
There’s way too many options when ordering on the screen that I get overwhelmed and end up making careless mistakes like getting both “mayo” and “aioli” on my sandwich, without realizing that aioli is just a fancy word for mayo. Doubling up on mayo is for people who straight up hate themselves and I don’t put myself in that box. Judging by the way that sandwich made me feel the “ITS BACK!” used on the Hot Turkey and Gravy promotional poster was less of an “It’s Back by popular demand” and more of an “It’s Back!!” screamed by a Japanese person when Godzilla reemerges from the water. Anyways, I wasn’t going to let impending diarrhea ruin this fishing trip before we had even bought the bait yet.

As we closed in on Cape May we pulled into a 24 hour bait and tackle shop to load up on mackerel. The crusty old man behind the cashier asked YP what he was looking to catch tonight to which he replied “Sand sharks and Dusky sharks” I was in the mood to crack Dad jokes so chirped in that “if we caught a “Sandusky” shark, we’d be sure to keep that predator locked up.” The bait shop guy’s eyes lit up and he proceeded to go on a five minute monologue on how we would murder Sandusky if he ever got his hands on him. It featured gems such as “I’d put him in a crab trap and let them pick off the flesh. bones don’t float” and “We should lock all pedophiles in a room and just have them fuck each other till they die.” I appreciated the fact he hated child molesters, but listening to how a 60 year old man would brutally murder a sex offender in gory detail is not my idea of a fun Saturday night.

I started to feel my first pangs of regret. Maybe I should have just gone to that Dipset concert after all. I bet Juelz Santa and Cam’Ron were performing “Oh Boy” at this very moment. Fuck me.

I felt marginally better once we were back on the road heading to our final fishing destination. YP scouted two different beaches around Cape May to check the tides and ask other fisherman if they were having any luck tonight. The first guy we asked responded “Ya hear that? Thats the sound of my wife and kid not bitching at me so I’m catching all I need tonight.” Promising. YP finally decided upon on the spot where we would set up #SharkCamp but then realized that he had never booked a hotel or airbnb for us tonight. It was 10:30 pm. His intern, Rudy, was able to find us a room with two queen sized beds for $480. Not the cheapest but it was literally the last room available for miles around so we decided to bite the bullet. By the time we checked into our hotel and returned to the beach to start setting up our rods it was midnight. No sweat, the sharks come out at night. I posted up on a beach chair, cracked my first beer, and settled in for a long night of swashbuckling adventure. It was at that exact moment that it started torrentially down pouring, a summer squall if you will. We had all of our cameras and electronics with us on the beach so made a mad dash back to YP’s truck to seek shelter. The rain continued to pound down around us with no sign of slowing down so I decided that all I could do now was let the soothing insulin spike of a Twisted Tea variety pack wash over my body.

It was then that I realized my phone was broken, having gotten wet in the squall. I debated leaving this tidbit out of the story as it reveals I still have a non-water resistant iPhone 6 and didn’t want to risk Whitney dropping a “Donnie Does is a Peasant” blog. Luckily, he admitted that his brain almost exploded writing his Riggs takedown so there is zero chance he has the mental stamina to drop another one this month. I think I’m good. For the next hour YP pretended to know how to read a weather radar on his phone before I suggested that we just cut our losses and head back to the hotel. Once we returned to our spot, YP decided that he was going to head back out once the rain stopped and cast a few lines. I informed him that I would be staying at the hotel but as the resident Shark expert would be “on call” if he needed me. Unfortunately, he remembered my phone was broken and told his intern to leave his phone next to my pillow so I could be contacted in case of an emergency.

“Ok buddy just give me a holler if you need be” I replied,  “Make sure the ringer is on!”

I turned off the phone as soon as they left, threw my headphones in, and let the soothing sounds of “Dipset Anthem” lull me into a false sense of well being.

At 5AM I was awoken by YP.

“Did you guys catch any sharks?” I asked

“No, but there is gonna be a guy sleeping on the floor of our hotel room tonight. He has been sleeping out of his car the past 5 nights and we felt bad”

I considered telling him that he should rethink inviting homeless people into our hotel when we have thousands of dollars of camera equipment lying around but before I had a chance to I had already fallen back to sleep. Oh well, maybe it was just a dream.

It was not a dream. There was in fact a strange man sleeping on our floor when I woke up. Apparently the guy was a shark fishing guide who YP often runs into when fishing in Cape May. I was less offended by YP inviting randos into our hotel room than I was by the fact he was trying to replace me with another Shark expert. The guy was nice enough though and hadn’t robbed us blind so I decided to let it slide. As it was no longer raining, we headed back to the beach to try to salvage the trip.

Immediately upon casting our lines and getting our rods firmly planted in the sand, I noticed a pod of dolphins swimming 50 yards off the beach. It was the first time on the entire trip that I found myself in touch with nature. Watching them gracefully bob and weave through the waves helped me forget about the terrors of the previous night. It was beautiful.

The sharks still weren’t taking the bait though so I spent the next hour going hippo mode and learning about Sand Fleas from YP. I’ve spent my entire life near the ocean and have wandered through my fair share of asian seafood markets and yet had somehow never learned that there is a creature known as a “sand flea.” If I was given the choice between fighting 500 sand flea sized sharks or one shark sized sand flea I would take the sharks any day of the week, Sand fleas look creepy as fuck.

I reckon they would taste good deep fried and seasoned with salt, pepper, chilies, and garlic, but if I had never seen the Chinese eating them yet, I wasn’t about to be the first give it a go.

(I have since learned that they do in fact eat them in Thailand. #whoathatsweird)

Instead of snacking on them, I challenged YP to a #FleaOff to see who could catch the most in 2 minutes and smoked his ass 8-3. It was then that Rudy (YP’s intern) showed me a few of the pictures he had been taking of us on the beach. My body, it was disgusting. 

I decided to be proactive and go for a jog down the beach in order to shed a few LBs. However, after I had made it about 100 yards down the beach I hear YP screaming “Shaaarrkk! Shaaarrkk!” I sprinted back, which probably looked more like a casual jog but I swear I was running as fast as my legs could carry my chubby frame, to find that both YP as well as that homeless guy who slept on our floor the previous night, had both hooked something BIG.

YP in particular seemed to have an absolute monster at the end of his line as he was being rag dolled by the thing. I got behind him and grabbed him by the shoulders to give him more support but stopped after a minute as it looked really gay (not that there is anything wrong with that).

I then repeatedly offered to dive in the water and wrangle the thing with my barehands but YP insisted on reeling it in the old fashioned way. After a suspenseful 20 minute power struggle he finally got the thing close to shore and I caught my first glimpse of the beast. Thing was an absolute UNIT.

Sandbar shark, approx. 7 ft long, which if you’re keeping track at home, is about a foot taller than Jimmer “The Mormon Megalodon” Fredette. It was at this point that YP decided to hand me the rod, knowing that only The Shark Knight would be able to get a behemoth like this onto the sand. However, before he could get me the rod the shark whipped it’s tail, slicing the fishing line in the blink of an eye. He was free! YP dove into the water in a desperate attempt to grab its tail (a very questionable move) but it had already disappeared back into the deep. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be getting up close and personal with a specimen like that, but as I mentioned before, the homeless shark guide had also hooked one. The Sand bar shark on his line was only about 4 feet long so we were able to wrangle it into submission fairly easily. We even got him to pose for a family photo but just like a cranky toddler, he refused to smile.

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Can’t blame the shark for not giving the camera a shit-eating grin though. He was built for the ocean, not photo shoots, so after a couple minutes we set the little guy back into his aquatic playground, restoring the natural order of things. We’re content-creators, not killers. (If it was a Striped Bass I’d probably kill it, that’s good meat)

Getting that close to such a majestic prehistoric hunter was both a therapeutic and humbling experience. More therapeutic and humbling than a Dipset concert? The world may never know. Be on the lookout for the launch of YP’s Barstool Outdoors series this fall.