Tideline: Conway Bowman

Tideline: Conway Bowman

San Diego, California

The last stop on the “Sanity Express” may well be “the 182,” a nondescript point on a GPS map twenty-some miles off the coast of San Diego. It is here, heaving through the swells in an 18-foot Parker skiff, with a burlap chum bag hanging off the side, waiting for mako sharks to arrive, where we start to think that, maybe, this whole fly-fishing adventure had gone a bit too far.

There is something profoundly disturbing about crossing the line from chasing “gamefish” to chasing apex predators that not only are capable of killing you, they may have strong interest in killing you. In many ways, fly fishing for sharks on the open Pacific is something of a professional and personal reckoning, one that will leave you questioning your physical limits and those of your tackle, your personal safety, and, finally, your own sanity. Although unlikely, there always is the possibility that you might not make it back from your first shark fishing trip.

Unfazed by these risks, Conway Bowman decided nearly ten years ago to specialize in catching sharks on fly rods, shortfin makos to be exact. The absurdity of this little hobby has earned him considerable coast-to-coast acclaim. While we half expected Conway to be the ultimate X-Games outcast with an adrenaline habit, within the first five minutes on his boat we found someone altogether different. Meticulously preparing his boat and tackle for the day’s fishing, Conway is a technician and surgeon. He also carries himself with a balance, confidence, and California coolness that never smacks of feigned bravery or bravado. His eyes are sharp and blue, and often look straight through you.

For Conway, his life among the sharks has legitimate cause. On the coast of Southern California, there aren’t hordes of trout, tarpon, or bonefish, but there are plenty of makos. As a young outdoorsman from San Diego with a genuine passion for fly fishing, Conway realized early on that, for better or worse, you fish for what’s in your backyard.

“We all have our own fish. Makos are my ultimate fish,” he says. “It means something when you tie into a fish that can fight back with something more than just a pull on your line. A mako can kill you, and that changes the whole game.”

* * *

Most good fishermen, when they can’t be on the water, go someplace where they can think about fishing. Conway makes a point to take us to Stroud’s tackle, where he introduces us to his “surrogate parents,” Bill and Eileen Stroud, who have run a small fly shop in the heart of urban San Diego for the past 35 years. Conway recalls many afternoons ratting around this shop, kicking over boxes, looking at pictures, as his father, John Bowman, and Bill Stroud shared stories from Alaska, Montana, and Northern California’s spring creeks.

John Bowman, taught his son how to trout fish during summers their family spent at Redfish Lodge in central Idaho. To this day, Mr. Bowman is proud to have placed an early “diversion” in Conway’s life (originally meant to keep him out of trouble) that since has grown into a source of sport, income, and natural wonder.

The visit to Stroud’s is like a trip with the middleweight champ, back to the neighborhood gym where it all started. Conway still treasures this place and these people with uncommon reverence, and he credits his father and the Strouds for fueling his passion. Bill Stroud claims he tried to warn Conway away from fishing as a way of life, often remarking, “Don’t do it, it’ll ruin you!” but soon learned that Conway was an independent young man who would make his own decisions. Conway says he respected the advice of his uncle Bill, but knew fishing was something he had to do.

So Conway bought an old 17-foot aluminum skiff, read everything outdoor writer Nick Curcione had to say about mako fishing, and began spending his days pressing further and further offshore in search of sharks. With only a compass for navigation, it took Conway two years to land his first mako. In hindsight, he admits these self-taught shark lessons were dangerous, but very effective.

Conway now stands as the California icon of shark fishing with the fly. He has been written up in numerous magazines and newspapers, has been on television shows, and has clients from all over the country. There is no counting the number of world record size fish that have been caught on Conway’s boat–fish that never will be listed in an IGFA record book because he doesn’t concern himself with tapes and scales, and is adamant about letting every fish go. Yet, Conway is humble about his many accomplishments.

“For me, being famous for fishing, or being known as the best fishing guide is about as noteworthy as being the tallest midget in the world.”

* * *

Fly fishing for sharks is a fairly straightforward operation. It starts by finding a spot, like the 182, where the ocean floor drops or shelves off abruptly, creating habitat for the schools of mackerel, skipjacks, albacore, and the pelagics that chase them. Once there, you check the current, plan a drift of several miles over the shelf, set a blood and chum slick, then wait.

Everything on the shark drift feels small, the boat, your gear, the birds, even the clouds overhead. It is an unsettling smallness, exaggerated by the contrast of gray ocean expanse and the enormous creatures that swim here. The concussive blowing of blue whales sounds near the horizon, and we only can sit and watch, awestruck, as they roll into view, like black 737s melting over the ocean’s surface and exhaling clouds of spray.

Conway watches cautiously. If the whales get beneath us inadvertently, they could toss our boat over like a cork, without ever realizing or caring that we are here. The whales pass without fanfare, and Conway begins slicing up an albacore carcass with a rusted knife and stuffs it into a burlap sack. The sacks are placed in plastic milk crates, then hung over the side of the boat.

“That’s it boys. No swimming from now on,” smiles Captain Dave Trimble from the chase boat.

Captain Dave is 23, energetic, handsome, and still at the stage of life where everything is about the pursuit. Whether cruising for California women in his classic rag-top Cadillac, running all night on offshore albacore trips, fashioning mannequin-on-surfboard teasers for white sharks, or helping Conway fill in his summer mako charters, life is “all good” for Captain Dave. Captain Dave has spent the last year helping Conway run shark charters, earning a reputation as a young, dedicated, brash, and hard working new Captain. Conway likes his style, but most importantly, respects his work ethic.

“Captain Dave’s dream is to pull on a ‘Whitey’ with a fly rod…I just want to make sure I’m out of the state when it happens.”

* * *

In truth, the great white doesn’t have much on the mako, other than size and reputation.

They both are killing machines. The mako might be more efficient than the great white. He is faster, and can swim up to 60 miles per hour, placing him in the top handful of fish, along with the swordfish, and the wahoo for speed. There are other unique features that differentiate the mako as a premier hunter and predator.

Conway describes their “Messerschmitt” bodies as muscular, compact, powerful, and superbly efficient. Their eyes point forward. Unlike other sharks, they do not have protective skin flaps or eyelids, meaning they have to bite to kill, and avoid violent struggles with their prey. The loss of an eye is a death sentence for a mako in the open ocean. The fuselage is lean but thick, and it tapers down in abrupt curves to the tail, joining power and control in one precise point. Their fins are understated, offering a stealthy ride through water.

A mako shark’s mouth is a mangled array of teeth that point and overlap in conflicting patterns, like bent and twisted strands of razor wire. They seem disorganized and random, but this actually is a virtue of evolution. Unlike other sharks that might stun, or bite, or scavenge in three or four steps, the mako hunts and kills in one fluid motion. His teeth allow him to deliver the death blow, hold on, and consume in one pass.

The mako has a killer instinct that starts before birth, as the unborn pups literally kill and feed off of weaker siblings in utero. This gives the ones that do make it to birth an edge to survive the infinite threats that abound when they are born into bluewater.

But what sets the mako apart from all other fish is his brain. Roughly the size of a cat’s brain, uncommonly large by fish standards, the mako’s brain seems to give him the most necessary hunter’s attribute–cunning. In fact, Conway says all makos behave somewhat differently than others, making them respectably unpredictable, as if they have their own personalities.

We notice a stillness near the boat. The birds have flown away. Conway cups the brim of his hat and stares into the chum slick.

“He’s here,” Conway utters. “I know it. It might take him 45 minutes to work his way into view, but here’s here, checking us out. I can feel it.”

* * *

There are different ways you can find a mako shark, or have him find you. You can look for blue water, find dislodged kelp and bait, and watch for terns. Conway says terns gliding and diving near the boat are good telltales that sharks are in the area. The gulls are scavengers; they chase baitfish, but they also pick at junk and debris. Terns are more deliberate. They like to eat fresh afterkill the makos leave behind as they feed through schools of fish.

Sometimes, you chance upon “finners,” makos cruising along the surface in lazy hunt mode. But they aren’t easy to spot, with their compact, rounded dorsal fins, and they seldom telegraph their presence.

With a chum slick spread out in an oily film behind the boat, Conway sporadically casts a mackerel carcass with a spinning rod in random directions around the boat, and retrieves the teaser with a fast skitter along the surface. For the most part, this is casting practice. Every now and again, the dragging dead bait brings a swirl, a slash, or a sleek, black shadow tracking toward the boat, but more often, the mako shows up on his own terms.

You can be chatting, eating a sandwich, or just killing time, when the scene abruptly changes. You quickly notice the small blue sharks pecking at the chum bag have disappeared. There is an eerie calm.

A slate profile with black marble eyes makes a glide-by run a scant few arm lengths from the boat, close enough to look right in your eyes and make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It isn’t fear, and it isn’t adrenaline. It is awe.

Unlike most fish that get a good look at the boat and spook, the mako doesn’t swim faster or get nervous in the presence of humans. He just stays, checking you out, calculating his next move. Conway says a mako will hover within a stone’s throw of the boat for a good half hour, maybe longer, just taking his time, waiting for something to happen.

“Makos know they are at the top of the food chain out here. When they come in close to the boat, they wonder where we fit in.”

* * *

There is no maelstrom of human energy when the mako shows, unlike what you might expect. In other offshore situations, like billfish charters, the arrival of a fish means the boat goes electric: Bluewater mates jump to life, the deck sings with action, rods crank up, voices yell, and engines begin downshifting.

But Conway Bowman always measures his mako, and this a fish that measures you back.  Everything drops to a calm, deliberate hush. Words become scarce, there is only the sound of swells lapping against the hull, and all eyes are trained overboard.

“There he is…what an awesome fish,” Conway whispers. “This one is a slug, a real gorilla. 160 pounds, maybe better.”

Conway is calculating. Slowly, quietly, he grabs the teaser rod, and makes ready for a cast. We’ll have to work this fish up, make him mad, if we are going to get him to eat a fly. After the shark makes two or three passes by the boat, Conway confirms his choice of fly rod. We’ll use the 15-weight, the big one.

Most “catchable” makos are adolescents, ranging between 50 and 150 pounds. The waters off San Diego are one of the few prime breeding grounds on the globe where these fish are found in abundance. The chum slick, however, does not discriminate between “big” and “little,” and it is not unusual to bring in a large female mako (over 400 hundred pounds), or even a great white. This spring, Captain Dave had an eighteen foot great white eat a 90-pound Pacific white-sided dolphin twenty feet behind the transom.

We ask Conway what equipment he would consider using to deal with a 400-pound mako:

“When they get that big, I grab the camera and leave the rods alone.”

* * *

After you have fished enough offshore situations, you come to anticipate the instantaneous runs, the thunderous charges, and the straight-to-the air acrobatics of pelagic fish. A Mako often will not do that.

A Mako is used to eating things that try to fight back, stick him, hurt him, and scar the insides of his mouth. Your brightly colored shark fly is the equivalent of small, harmless baitfish, a lunch snack, or an “M&M.” So there is lag time, even after you watch the mako eat the fly, and start swimming away with colorful red tassles draped out of the corner of his mouth.

This lag time lasts about 30 seconds, although in your head, it seems to last an hour. All you do at this point is hold the fly line taught in your hand. It is a fine balance. Not enough tension, and the mako will spit out the fly. Too much and he will break you clean off with the first slash of his tail. When you hold it right, you are letting him stick himself, digging the fly deep into a scarce soft pit in the corner of his mouth.

Sometimes, despite your best effort, the fly wraps around a mangled tooth, of which the mako has many. All it takes is a head shake and the fly pops loose. The consolation in this case is that the hard-mouthed fish doesn’t feel anything, and if he did, he doesn’t care. More than likely, he will come back for another grab.

Properly hooked and held tight (enough for him to finally feel some resistance), the mako senses something is wrong, and this is one of the very few times in his life when he goes on the defense, becoming a vicious, unpredictable fighter.

He will run and charge, and if you’re lucky, cartwheel and throw himself across the ocean with violent indiscretion. You must be careful to keep him and his gnashing teeth from jumping in the boat. Sometimes, he’ll jump and flop over on the line, cutting himself free with a clean slice of his tail. Usually, he fights almost to the death, holding his ground, insulted and aggravated.

“The only time the shark loses his trademark discipline is when he’s in the air. It is an awesome encounter, because that’s the one moment when he is out of his world.”

* * *

Conway grabs the leader, and pulls the fish alongside the boat. He lifts its substantial head, tilting up its black snout, and dropping the jaws to reveal a paint-can-sized mouth of ugly teeth. With his other hand, he slides a self-designed hook release tool along the steel leader, over the fly, and with a pop, the hook comes loose, and the big, blue-gray fish cruises angrily away. This dirty ballet is over, and nobody got hurt.

As the day wears on, the sharks come and go in spurts. An hour of nothing…three fins pouring down a swell at the boat…a missed hookset…another missed hookset…another missed hookset. More nothing…finally, a fish caught. We never feel comfortable, but we start to lose our fear, wrapped up in the fascination of these mako sharks and their acrobatic grace.

Likewise, we grow comfortable with Conway. His genuine nature, his passion, cannot help but instill a sense of admiration, not born of skill, but of his respect for the environment he works. These clearly are his fish. His friends. He says he sees himself in the makos

“These are elusive fish, a lot like me. Sometimes they like me, sometimes they don’t. I truly believe that the makos are sensitive to someone’s energy. Good energy on the boat means a good day with the sharks. I know when a guy on the boat has bad vibes. Not to get too weird, or California ‘new age’ on you or anything, but it’s important to understand:

“It’s a very primal thing when you come into this world with the makos.”

* * * 

Things of this world evolve: Sharks, rivers, oceans, even anglers.

So it seems that Conway Bowman also will evolve down another path, sooner rather than later, he says. It isn’t that he’s done with makos, or learning about them. It is the opposite: He says he wants to spend less time fishing, and more time observing, like the very first days, when he would sit on his aluminum boat and watch these magnificent creatures circle around, without ever lifting a rod to cast.

“I want to be an amateur scientist,” he says. “Spend more time studying and tagging these makos, rather than trying to aggravate them.”

He plans to give Captain Dave the keys to the kingdom. The clients, the referrals, the business–even the secret list of anglers who get the “local” treatment, a.k.a. a day spent in unproductive water filled with just enough blue sharks to keep anglers excited, without really showing them prized mako locations.

And he will look for new adventures in new water. Maybe roosterfish in Baja or the Rio Santo Domingo trout in Mexico. But San Diego always will call him back, in one way or another, if only to run down a finner, or spend an afternoon in Stroud’s shop.

Conway is proud of the fact that the commercial fishermen and day charter captains never quite figured out what or why he does what he does. “Hey, River Runs Through It…How’d it go?” the commercial skippers whistle and laugh when Conway putters his little skiff back into the Dana Landing.

It all is fine. Everyone finds their own niche. The ocean is big enough for all of us, Conway says.

* * *

“I have the same recurring dream, about sharks, every now and again.

“In this dream I am fighting the sharks. They are swimming all around me, in big circles. Everywhere I look, I see sharks.

“I am battling them as hard as I can, and always…always, the sharks win.

“But I am not afraid. I am never afraid.

“It isn’t a violent, bloody battle, but they get me, one piece at a time, and still, I am not afraid.

“And I just go down fighting. And after the last punch is thrown, it’s like I just concede, okay, you won…it’s cool.

“I have tried to understand and interpret this dream, and the best I can imagine is that it shows the difference between fear and respect. Respect is different than fear, but no less powerful.

“Fishermen go after a certain quarry. It becomes their job. And my quarry has become the shark.

“Over the years, you begin to live vicariously through your quarry, and I have begun to live vicariously through these sharks.

“I think that’s ultimately why they cooperate with me.

“I respect them, and they respect me.”

* * *

MAKO

A shark can smell a drop of blood in twenty thousand 

gallons of water, but no one has the slightest idea 

when a mako will show, anyone who does should be picking horses.

We are prepared to wait seven minutes or seven hours 

for a fifty to a hundred and fifty pound adolescent.

Everyone is praying we avoid a large female or great white. 

Once, a seven-foot female came finning straight back 

at the captain’s boat, disappeared under the engine 

(shearing off an eighteen-weight fly line on the trim plate), 

then cartwheeled five times into an overcast horizon. 

“Whitey” ate a ninety-pound dolphin behind the transom 

this spring, and these baby bonito sharks 

can be real pit bulls when they put their mouths 

on the prop to taste electricity coming off the zinc anode. 

Captain says, if a mako gets in the boat, 

everyone grab a gaff, and we get her ass back in the water, 

OK? because no one’s swimming back from here. 

A mako’s uncovered eyes are pitch-black desert obsidian; 

their teeth are clear plastic flames; their backs, blue and grey sandpaper. 

When they wish, makos straight-line or launch 

themselves at offshore clouds with car accident velocity. 

Does anyone know why we fish for these creatures?

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Chapter was excerpted from Tideline: Captains, Fly-Fishing, and the American Coast (2004). Photos: Marco Lorenzetti