By Dr. Al Plechner
I spent my summers when I was 12, 13 and 14 years old during my summers working for my uncle in a wholesale grocery wharehouse, unloading freight cars of coffee beans and boxes of canned groceries, on the Willamet river in Portland Oregon. On the weekends they took me to the shoreline of Oregon to a place called Seaside.
I had a chance to work for the Seaside Clam Company each summer. They would pay me 10 cents a pound for uncleaned surf perch and 25 cents a pound for uncleaned salmon. As a young man I did make summer money outside of the wholesale grocery wharehouse.
I would dig razor clams, chop them into pieces and chum the incoming tide. I had a gunny sack attached to my side so that when I caught fish I would unhook them and keep them in my sack.
One afternoon I was standing waist high in the surf catching perch when something grabbed my gunny sack and almost pulled me over. To my surprise , there was a huge tiger shark that wanted to share my catch. I slowly loosened my sack from side and let the shark do the rest. I carefully turned around to pick my safest route to get away from the shark and when I went to turn around, to quickly wade to shore, I had only a deep, blue crab hole that was very deep that I did not want to swim through with this 12 foot shark close by. I proceeded along this ridge outside this crab hole for what seemed to be an eternity while watching for the shark. I made it safely to shore and realized the shark had not been after me but only my catch. The next day I was at it again, however while standing waist deep in this booming surf, I had a crab grab me by the heel. I think I nearly jumped clean out of the water as I thought the shark had me. After that I fished off the rocks one mile south at a place they called the Cove. I would wade out on the slippery rocks where I could catch salmon and a type of fish they called a sea trout, but it really was some kind of kelp bass.
One morning I had waded out to cast into the deeper water when I noticed a rock off to my right that was moving. It was a tiger shark again. I put a sea trout on my hook and casted to the shark which immediately grabbed the bait. It was a huge shark but I figured my 300 yards of woven 30 pound test nylon line was the answer. At 310 yards when I heard the line snap like gun going off, I realized I was not as smart as I thought I was, and probably lucky to not have been involved in something I could not have handled.
Just another forgotten adventure.
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