Kippie-yi-yeh

You can always tell the grizzled veteran from the neophyte in this surf casting game. The guy that's wrangled his share of pelicanos always looks left, looks right and then casts. It seems like the pelicans fly south in the morning and north in the evening, they're close to the water as they  get a lift from the wind off the waves while they're hunting food. And if you've never seen them fish, these babies work for a living, they go in head first and come up gulping. So when they fly by, you look, if the cast is alright but they're headed for your retrieve you drop the tip, kinda 'bow' to them and hope for the best.

But sometimes the toro's get  the bait fish trapped against the shoreline and the bite is on, the pelicans are collecting little fish and we're collecting the fish that are after their fish. Pretty sporty, it takes a good judgement and a kind of side armed low trajectory cast when they're this thick....but you're still gonna have to wrangle a pelicano or two if you want your 6 dollar lure back and collect some toro.

So this is a pic of Ernie who  owns more Krocodile lures than anyone in Mazatlan....great guy, expert fisherman and Team X's designated pelican wrangler. He's been snapped at enough times to know they can't hurt him...well not to bad that is,and once he gets hold of one he has the delicate touch of a surgeon. And Erns a little on the frugal side so no matter how unpleasant the task he always recovers the goods.

I've often wanted to get pics of Ern wrangling the pelicano (or Christmas turkey as Slah would say) but I haven't had courage enough to get the camera out during the procedure. He might just take the pliers after me.  I'm supposed to help with all 'shamoozles'. So out of respect for my friend I've passed up the opportunity to show you a man and his trade...but yesterday I got the next best thing. Expert wranglers who didn't need, or for that matter even want my help and a perfect pelicano/lure retrieval, text book.

First thing ya gotta do is get him out of the water. This is best done by hand as the true veteran wrangler would never put so much stress on his 200 dollar reel or his 300 dollar rod. Although I did have John Shively who was Alaska's DNR Commissioner at the time tell me that fighting a seagull in mid-air was kinda fun....a real highlight of my guiding career....but that's another story. 

 Then ya gotta get hold of them. This guy is a wing man and Ern sometimes goes for the throat. I know it looks bad but trust me, like most things in nature these guys are durable...and there's lots of them...in fact in Alaska they'd call it over escapement, ya just can't let nature run wild ya know.

These guys use the subdue method. If you cover his eyes he settles down for the surgery. Ern, he prefers the faster and less invasive freehand-bulldog procedure. In any case the ol pelicano is just fine, off on the hunt again and our fisherman friends haven't lost a dime.

So that's a primer on pelican wrangling.  Notice he's flying just fine.  The end result is no casualties (well except for the toro of course) and our fishing friends are headed home with some good protein for their families.