A Fishing Surprise in Guemes Channel
A local fisherman makes an unexpected catch when he discovers a shark hooked on his halibut line.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Townsend, who had a halibut line anchored out in Guemes channel, went to raise his line and found to his surprise that instead of a halibut he had caught a shark. It appears that a dogfish had swallowed the bait and hook, and the shark in turn swallowed the dogfish. The shark measured seven and a half feet long and weighed about 150 pounds. In appearance it was very much like the man-eating species, but was pronounced by some to be of the species known as the 'mud shark.'
“it appears that a dogfish had swallowed the bait and hook, and the shark in turn swallowed the dogfish.”
Local fishing anecdotes remain a staple of Northwest journalism. While the shark species might be misidentified by the 1892 reporter, the visceral account of a creature within a creature captures the curiosity of maritime life in the Salish Sea.
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