Northwest Reel Life April 2023 Volume 2 Issue 8 - Flipbook - Page 22
You’ve heard of Shark Week on Discovery
Channel. This is not that. We booked two
days on the F/V Miss Raven, a 43-foot
fishing vessel out of Newport. Our mission
was to find blue sharks in the deep blue,
chum them to the surface, and stick them
with feathers. We called it Shark Weekend.
On board were my daughter Tiffany,
Sterling West, Paul Galvin, Sam Pyke, Will
Saunders and Mathew McFarland and his
boys, Chisel and Finney. To catch sharks
on the fly, Matthew McFarland prepared
three rods, long sticks built to throw 10to 14-weight lines, with steel leaders and
bright feathered creations. Now all we
needed were fins in the water.
22 | NWFISHING.net
We stepped aboard the Miss Raven and
met skipper Mike Sorensen and his son
Sean. Minutes after the safety meeting was
over, the 300-horse John Deere diesel fired
and we motored out of the harbor beneath
the arch of the Yaquina Bay Bridge. When
we crossed the bar, waves swallowed the
lights of Newport. As dawn broke through
the gray clouds, Sean threw the crab pots
over and Mike marked them on the GPS.
Then someone spotted harbor porpoises
off the bow.
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