Sooner or later, we all think about it. I mean cranking a fly reel drag down and seeing how hard we can pull. Friend and reel-maker Ted Juracsik did it 30 years ago when he trolled a cedar plug on a fly outfit for tunas. Call me crazy, but some anglers may be happy to know that the spirit lives on.

A bull shark rises to dead herring chum.

For fly fishermen, the great offshore represents the final frontier. It’s out here in the domain of tunas and billfish that we still find quarry too tough to boat with regulation fly gear. Sharks—at least the large oceanic varieties—are prime examples. Although inshore fly fishermen have managed to land some pretty impressive specimens, some sharks of the open sea continue to elude capture. This, for a masochistic few, makes deepwater shark fishing with its attendant physical torture, worth the effort.

Chasing sharks with fly gear has always been considered an iffy proposition. The big ones suffer from limited vision and aren’t likely to pursue a castable fly. Then there’s the all-too-frequent problem of cutoffs, normally not the result of angler error but usually because of the shark’s abrasive skin. Stated simply, you can do everything right and still lose the fish of a lifetime. That brings the audience rating for offshore shark fishing down near absolute zero.

Nevertheless, captains Andy Novak and Brian Sanders are an irascible lot. Like me, they have few compunctions about throwing a fish or two in the box. They know how to locate the action and they’re aggressive about pursuing it. The latter, I should add, is an indispensable commodity whenever you go after any big fish. If after reading this account, you decide to run with the torch, Andy and Brian represent the kind of cockpit help you’ll definitely want around.

When Andy invited me to Chokoloskee Island, having fished this sleepy Ten Thousand Island outpost before, I had a good idea of what to expect. This time I was way off base.

“There have been some big sharks offshore. Last week Brian and I teased up a bunch of bulls. We even saw three or four tigers.”

Okay.

“We’ll catch a few cudas for chum. Last year we released a couple big bulls and blacktips on fly. You can do it easy.”

Chum fishing. Ho-hum.

I asked Andy if he thought I could get a 200-pounder to strike a fly that was legitimately cast and retrieved.

“Sure. Just tie up some big orange Deceivers for the blacktips and if you have any billfish flies, bring them along,” he advised.

I also remember hearing something about tides and sinking lines. Whatever it was, I immediately forgot. What did occur to me, however, was possibly the craziest idea of my flyfishing career. If I was going to fish for monsters, I decided to rig an outfit that took the guesswork out of chasing big game. Or so I thought.

First, I’d call Scott Carrol at Scientific Anglers and get him to run some tensile strength tests on their new tarpon lines. Then I’d fill my reels with heavy backing. I’m talking about 130-pound test gelspun stuff. And rather than tying up a class tippet, I’d add a 5-foot butt section of 125-pound mono with a double surgeon’s knot. That would be the tippet. Then I’d attach fly and tippet to a piece of No. 9 leader wire and throw in a bottle of ibuprofen for good measure.

Not your run-of-the-mill fly fishing outfit, huh?

But it sounded like great fun.

Besides, there’d be no room for excuses. If I could get a shark to bite, it would definitely be him or me. I had my doubts about the system but in the end, decided to give it a try.

When the big day finally came, it turned out to be one of those mid-August scorchers. By the time we left Chokoloskee Island Park, the temperature was already hovering in the high 80s. Racing along in Brian’s 22-foot boat created a breeze but after a half-hour run offshore, we slowed to idle speed. I didn’t know it yet but the day would heat up in more ways than one. From the way he and Andy were huddled over the GPS, I suspected they’d located one of those fabulous Gulf Coast wrecks.