skishing?

[cowherder]

So would anybody do this? This guy Paul Melnyk is crazy! And the yellow flippers, wouldn't they make them better for sharks to see? Then you look at the fish he catches, and think, I want to try that! How many here would? Crazy stuff, beautiful cows!

[wish4fish]

did u hear the part where he says thats a small one, lol. I wud do it, who cares about a few sharks?

[Rip-Plugger]

Paul is crazy but not a fool.
i'd say he is the Tred Barta of skishing.
I wouldn't try it as I have seen what swims out there but I woud watch from shore!

R-P

[DarkSkies]

C'mon RP, we ain't gettin any younger, if ya lose one leg to a shark ya always got the other one. I was at Montauk last year and saw something bobbing up and down 300 yards from shore. Too big to be a seal, and it was bobbing around where the boats were. Checked it out with the binocs, and it was a guy skishing!

A friend of mine knows him, says that's what he lives for. At least when he dies, he won't have any regrets. I just might try it this year, gotta upgrade my gear first.

[katiefishes]

Ok guys here is my question of the week.

What the heck is skishing?

[stripercrazy]

A combination of scuba diving and fishing. You wear a wetsuit, swim fins, some safety gear. Then you take your submersible reel and rod and and swim out to a rock, or you just float with the current. Cast, retrieve, and pull the big fish in, usually at night. Don't mind the sharks, there aren't too many.

Would you like one of us to set you up with some gear Katie?


skishing at montauk, Katie check out 1:10 and 2:40

[jimbob]

That is some crazy kind of fishing. I will swim out to a rock, but the idea of swimming and casting eels 300 yards off the beach is too much for me. If you catch a trophy out there you deserve it.

[katiefishes]

I'll do it when Jimbob does it.

[blitzhunter]

Here is an article from Forbes about Skishing and Paul Melnyk
Skishing

Monte Burke, 10.02.08, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated October 27, 2008
Combine fishing, swimming and water skiing and you get a most peculiar sport.

``Combine fishing, swimming and water skiing--try not to add a shark-- and you get a most peculiar sport

On a windy and overcast autumn day in Montauk, N.Y., the easternmost part of Long Island, I don a full-body, 7-millimeter wetsuit and flippers, and effectively put my life in the hands of a man who seems to have little regard for his own. Paul Melnyk-- a burly 53-year-old who has Jack Nicholson's gravelly voice and the same raffish tilt to the eyebrow--is the creator of a discipline of extreme fishing known as "skishing," in which the practitioner swims in the open ocean while fishing. Melnyk, a cabinet maker by day, calls himself the "skishin' magician," and boasts that the word "skishing" is now found in the Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Encarta dictionary. "It's actually swim-fishing," he says. "But 'swishing' just didn't sound right to me."

Melnyk and I find an open slot among the crowd of surfcasters on the beach and duckwalk backwards into the rough sea. We fall in and then kick on our backs hard for 50 yards to get out of the breaking waves that shoot briny water up my nose. When we are 100 yards from shore, we stop swimming, caught--by design--in a fast-moving, northwesterly riptide, buoyed by our thick wetsuits. This is where the fish are. With a long cast made by Melnyk at the crest of a 4-foot wave, we are officially skishing.

It's oddly serene in the middle of the ocean. We are well out of reach of the beach fishers. The cacophony of breaking waves is a distant rumble. The half-dozen charter boats chasing schools of fish are another 200 yards or so out from us. This is Melnyk's zone. "It's a stealthy way to fish," he says. "The fish think you're just a log or something." We bob in the waves. Striped bass crash bait near us. Hovering birds overhead occasionally swoop down to pick through the carnage.

It's almost enough to make you forget the dangers, first and foremost drowning. Melnyk says first-time skishers often panic and have to be taken back to shore. A strong enough riptide can send you flying past the tip of Montauk, next stop Portugal. A few years ago a man skishing at night got caught in a strong rip, hooked a rock and spent a harrowing few hours holding on before being rescued by a boat.

Melnyk discovered skishing one day by accident, when, fishing from a rock, he was pulled into the ocean by a 40-pound fish. "I panicked at first, then I enjoyed it," he says. Likewise, there's always the chance a skisher will catch something so big and powerful that he finds himself doing some impromptu face-first skiing.

Then there are the sharks.
While Montauk is one of the world's premier destinations for striped bass, it's equally famous as a shark hot spot. The late Montauk fishing captain Frank Mundus, who claimed to be the inspiration for the shark-hunting character Quint in Jaws, caught great whites weighing 4,500 and 3,427 pounds. (He also penned the literary classic Fifty Years a Hooker.) Says Melnyk, "I've seen fins and been bumped by them. But they don't mess with me because I show no fear. I'm not afraid of dying."

Before I have time to let that statement sink in, Melnyk rears back with his rod and hooks into a striped bass. The fish jerks him forward just a bit, but he quickly regains control and reels it in. It's not a big bass--8 pounds or so; he's caught stripers up to 50 while skishing--but Melnyk lets out a howl nonetheless and holds the fish up so the fishless surfcasters witness his success. Then he kisses the fish on the lips and flings it high in the air, an act meant to incense the surfcasters.


Battle lines have been drawn. Melnyk has it in for the surfcasters, whom he refers to as "the billion morons on the shore." He only went whole hog into skishing in 1995, after being kicked out of a surfcasting tournament for swimming out to a rock to fish. "I really do this to spite those shore guys," he says. "I always wanted to be notorious for something." He's succeeded.
Melnyk and I start in for shore just before reaching the invisible line drawn out from the Montauk lighthouse, where the riptide can get unbearably strong. He has to make his 6 p.m. choral practice (he's a baritone). We emerge from the water like two sea monsters. He pulls down the top of his wetsuit, revealing a tattoo covering his entire right shoulder: a skeleton catching a striped bass. We pass a surfcaster, who stares at Melnyk, jaws agape like a hooked striper. "You ain't all there, are you?" says the surfcaster. Melnyk just grins.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1027/202.html

[dogfish]

This is like an addiction or sickness. Maybe it's a good sickness, after all you can't get arrested for it, and no money needed for bail. These guys have brass ballz, I salute them.

[JakeF]

Best addiction I could have

[Stripercoast1]

Once you get in, you never want to get out. The only thing that keeps me on the rocks when fishing now, is to leave the fins at home.

[DarkSkies]

Once you get in, you never want to get out.

The adrenalin level you guys are running on reminds me of a scene from this movie

[porgy75]

I was reading about how guys swim out to rocks in wetsuits and korkers. I heard that the fast moving current near the rocks could be dangerous. What am I missing?

[Frankiesurf]

What you are missing (standing on shore) is deeper water, a hole, a rip or some far out structure.

It always helps to know the terrain you are fishing.

There is inherent danger in surfcasting. From the thrashing blue on the beach with trebles hanging out of its face to being knocked off a rock and possibly slamming your head on another one.

You have to know your limits and stick to them.

[DarkSkies]

Let me go on record as saying that "those guys" who swim out to rocks get all the respect in the world in my book. Whether we're talking about Melnyk and Frank Blasko, any of the other hardcore Montauk guys.

Or the guys who do it in other places, like Gunny aka Stripercoast1, Jake, anyone else who's insane enough to do it.

Someone recently mentioned that some were offended by their attitudes. The last I checked, living in the US gives you freedom to have an attitude.

None of that stuff matters to me, all that counts is that they love fishing. Blasko might look like a character from a Steven King movie but he's a helluva fisherman. I fished with him, and would fish with him again anytime.

Melnyk is an icon in the fishing community as well. Some call him crazy, some say he has a death wish. Some think he's rude.
Most of the guys who really know Paul will tell you that he will talk to anyone about the thing he loves most, skishing.

I got news for fishermen out there, there are characters that are a lot less friendly than these 2, especially if you mug their spot at night.

So to Melnyk and Blasko. They're doing it their way, and don't care if people like it or not. Effumall!

Mr Sid Vicious salutes them too. RIP, Sid.

[DarkSkies]

Here's a link to his site.

He's a great guy with some amazing stories to tell, check it out.

http://www.surfcasting.com/

[Frankiesurf]

One more thing I forgot to mention Porgy. It's a hell of a lot of fun!

[DarkSkies]

One more thing I forgot to mention Porgy. It's a hell of a lot of fun!

It's gotta be a blast, when will you start wearing the "seal suit" this year, Frank?

[ledhead36]

you are one of the fearless guys who go out to the rocks, Dark. Once being about how the water up to your neck on the way out. Do you wear a wetsuit or are you just wanting the punishment of the cold ocean water?