Fishing from a kayak is probably the fastest growing outdoor sport in the world and, just like many other things we Americans try to do better and bigger than anyone else, kayak fishing has become a form of “extreme sport.”

Twenty years ago it was considered to be a big accomplishment when a kayak angler caught a 35-pound striped bass. Kayakers began to push the capabilities of these small boats to their limits by paddling them into the open ocean waters far from shore. They were after big game fish such as tuna, marlin and wahoo. Folks began to wonder just how far this new kayak fishing would go, until someone tried to harpoon a blue whale from a 12-foot kayak. We can’t help but wonder what the upper limit is and just how far this “catch-the-biggest-fish” craze can go.

Last month the “Kayak Fish” magazine published a story of a 33-year old Swedish kayak angler who had taken a 1247-pound shark off the coast of Norway. It was a well-documented catch with lots of witnesses.

Joel Abrahamson had become tired of fishing from big, offshore boats and had taken up kayak fishing in his quest to take it back into the pure basics of angling. He had studied the habits of the fish he was targeting and determined that a good place to try his luck and skills at catching a shark of massive proportions was off the very deep water of the arctic coast of Norway. September looked like a good time to try to hook-up on a Greenland shark.

Dressed in a wet suit similar to those divers use, he tied his small kayak to a buoy anchored in 1600 feet of water, baited his 16/O circle hook with an 8-pound fish and let his 120-pound test braided line take the bait to the bottom. With the Penn International 50vsx reel’s drag set at 45 to 50-pounds, it took about 25 minutes to let the baited hook reach the bottom and another 20 minutes to reel the hook back up to check the bait.

It took several attempts to hook-up on what he hoped would be the shark he was targeting and after he did hook-up, it took him about an hour and a half to bring the fish up to where he could touch the leader and qualify the fish as officially being “caught.”

At several points during the fight Abrahamsson describes the fight as being “gnarly” His bent-butt big game fishing rod and Penn International reel was hooked up to a body harness he wore and, if the kayak should have been turned over during the fight he would have had to cut either the line or the rod harness to release himself from the huge fish. With the water temperature being in the low 40’s “gnarly” might have been a very appropriate term to describe going into the arctic waters while being attached to a 1200-pound Greenland shark.

Once the fish had been officially caught with the leader touch Abrahamsson turned the fish over to a team of marine biologists who were witnessing the catch. They determined that the 13.15-foot long shark had a girth of 6.6 feet and estimated that it weighed 1247-pounds. After their examination of the fish was complete it was released unharmed. It was an example of “catch and release fishing” in the extreme.

Another good example of extreme sport fishing was carried out about 20 years ago when some striped bass fishermen off the coast of New York and New Jersey simply donned wet suits and snorkeling gear and, in the middle of the night, waded out through the surf to try and catch some stripers as they moved southward on their annual migration. Each of these brave (some call it “foolhardy”) fishermen carried a medium-heavy weight, spinning rods and reels and they carried a plastic vented bag filled with live eels for bait.

Often these fishermen swam completely out of sight of land with their gear and drifted with currents and wind as the fished live eels to tempt a striped bass. It was catch and release fishing in another case of extreme outdoor sport.

When they did happen to hook-up on a nice striped bass, they went on what they called a “Montauk Sleigh Ride” with the fish, pulling them all over the Atlantic Ocean. This stretch of shoreline is noted for not only having big striped bass, it is also noted as having some really big great white sharks lurking about.

These fishermen did express some concerns with having some fish much larger that the striped bass they were targeting decided that they, not the eels on the hooks, were the bait. If their concerns should have ever been realized it is very doubtful that it would have been a case of catch and release fishing.