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Ben Dziwulski paddled a kayak out through the surf at 3 Rs road south of Dewey Beach on a pitch-black night earlier this summer and dropped a baited hook over the side.
He felt a bump against his kayak and knew it was probably a shark, probably a pretty big one.
"I get scared," he said, "but that gets your adrenaline pumping. You learn never to turn your headlamp on. You don't want to see what is out there."
The fishing that Dziwulski, a junior at North Carolina State University and member of the school's fishing team, does is not the serene and relaxing stuff of your grandfather's generation or even that of the thousands of people who fish the surf, the piers and from traditional boats here in Delaware.
This is extreme fishing, the epic battle between man and fish like Santiago in Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea," but pumped up on steroids.
The trouble is, even with high-tech gear, top-notch weather forecasts and years of experience, man doesn't always win.
In the last 10 months, two men -- one an angler with years of experience -- went missing while fishing off the rock jetty at Indian River Inlet. Neither body has been recovered.
Earlier this month in Florida, charter boat captain Tom Henry hit a wave coming through rough water in Jupiter Inlet, tumbled off his boat -- the "Waterdog" -- and was pulled from the water by lifeguards. He died from his injuries.
Saltwater anglers get pulled overboard by monster fish, speared by billfish and more routinely bitten by the very fish they are trying to dehook. Boats capsize in rough seas and sometimes, like last week at Indian River Inlet, the unexpected happens.
A man casting for bait from his small open boat got caught in the surf just north of the inlet rocks, when his net wrapped around the lower unit of the outboard.
He couldn't start the engine. He couldn't steer and in seconds, the hull of his boat was filled with water from the breaking waves -- all for a few mullet for bait.
Surfers and onlookers helped him pull the boat onto the beach, bail out the water and turn it around so he could get back out through the surf.
While no one can be absolutely certain what happened to Joel Thompson, of Georgetown, who went missing April 26 while fishing from the Indian River Inlet jetty, or Myungtiki Kim, of Vienna, Va., who disappeared while fishing there in November, most believe the two anglers slipped on the rocks and fell into the inlet while the tide was rushing in.
The inlet -- like many up and down the Atlantic coast -- is a turbulent place when the tide is changing.
It can be so rough and unpredictable, it's not unheard of for boats to capsize there.
At the Delaware Seashore State Park just south of the inlet, there is a reminder of how bad it can be.
A giant boulder is tucked back in the pines. It is a memorial to Anthony Travis Mangini and Jessica Lynn "J.J." Jones, two children who drowned when the boat they were in capsized in April 1986. Their deaths led to Delaware's life-jacket law for children.
Thanks to television programs like "The Deadliest Catch," people understand the perils of commercial fishing, from the pitching seas to the heavy gear.
In fact, commercial fishing is one of the most dangerous professions in the United States.
Between 1994 and 2004, 641 people died while fishing commercially, and more than 100 vessels were lost in each of those years, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health.
Commercial fishermen have a 28 times higher fatality rate than all U.S. workers, according to institute data.
There aren't similar detailed statistics for recreational anglers, but the Coast Guard keeps track of boating accidents and what people were doing at the time of the accident. In all, in 2009, there were 4,730 recreational boating accidents, 736 deaths and 3,358 injuries. People were fishing at the time of 688 of those accidents and there were 270 deaths and 303 injuries. Those numbers don't account for people who were injured or killed fishing from shore.
Still, Jim Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, doesn't consider much of what anglers are doing these days as extreme so long as they have the right equipment and the necessary skills.
He points to our fathers and grandfathers making their own cleats so they could navigate the slippery rocks of jetties and get to the fish.
"It's not like mountain climbing," he said. "It's fishing. ... None of it is really extreme."
The one exception, he said, is "skishing," the practice of putting on a wetsuit, strapping on a zipper bag full of bait and swimming out through surf and currents to the rocks or sandbars.
The practice has become legend off Montauk in Long Island.
"To me, that is extreme," he said. "To me, it's actually crazy."
Great white sharks migrate up and down the coast off Montauk -- remember the Roy Scheider line from Jaws: "You're gonna need a bigger boat."
Donofrio said those massive sharks are feeding on seals, and people in black wetsuits look quite seal-like.
He knows what can happen. In 2004, fishing alliance West Coast Regional director, Randy Fry, was diving for abalone off the Mendocino Coast in California.
He was in about 15 feet of water and 150 feet from shore when he was killed in a shark attack.
"It was horrific," Donofrio said. "In a wetsuit, you look just like a seal."
Delaware State Parks Enforcement Supervisor Steven C. Savidge said he doesn't know of anyone in this area who fishes in a wetsuit in the ocean.
" I know it is popular in the Northeast, where they call it 'skishing,' " he said. "I don't think that our conditions are conducive to that type of activity. They basically swim out to the offshore sandbars to fish, but our sandbars are too far off for that."
Anglers like Ric Burnley have a different approach for reaching fish in the middle range between the surf and the nearshore where boaters go.
Burnley, formerly of Lewes but now living in Virginia Beach, Va., paddles out in a kayak.
Dziwulski, who fishes at the beach off 3 Rs road, uses a kayak to run his bait to slightly deeper water where he targets big sharks that feed just off the beach.
This summer, Dziwulski made a living at it with his Surf Sharkin and Adventures.
The sharks are already there -- particularly at night when they routinely feed on bait fish that pass through, he said.
He said he has caught a 12-foot shark on a bait he cast from the beach, but he uses the kayak to get the bait a little beyond where the average surf fisherman can cast to increase the odds of a catch.
"I've fished all my life," he said. "I love fishing a lot ... I'm a big fan of Shark Week. I love sharks."
He baits large, circle hooks with whole bluefish, tuna heads or any fish that is especially bloody and then uses the kayak to paddle out through the surf. His clients wait on the beach, pole in hand.
He doesn't use chum to draw the fish in.
"We're talking the Atlantic Ocean," he said, pointing out that sharks are already there.
It isn't unusual to feel a bump -- as the sharks investigate the kayak, he said.
Back on shore, the line on the reel starts to peel out, making a high-pitched whirl. "We catch a lot of sand tigers and sandbar sharks and dusky sharks," he said. "Every once in a while, we'll catch a bull shark."
Earlier this summer, a client reeled in a 9-foot female that was pregnant, he said.
Dziwulski takes measurements, tags the fish, dehooks them and drags them back to the water to release them. "We know our risks," he said.
Like Dziwulski, Trevor McCarthy targeted big sharks this summer running baits out with a kayak off Cape Henlopen State Park.
The best fishing was at dusk. "It was very exciting," he said.
The smallest shark McCarthy and his fishing buddies caught was 4 feet; the largest: 8 feet, he said. They released all of them back into the ocean.
McCarthy, a high school senior in Landenberg, Pa., said the trend of using a kayak to run baits just off shore and target sharks started in Florida about three years ago.
So far, he hasn't had sharks bump into his kayak but "it wouldn't surprise me" if it happened, he said.
Burnley, a lifelong angler, said he fishes both from the beach and from a boat.
But he realized there was an area in between that he was missing.
That's when he started paddling out in a kayak.
"We started targeting all kinds of things we used to catch from a boat," he said. "Even small fish will pull you around. ... You really realize you're not in control anymore. ... It kind of makes you realize where you are on the food chain."
Burnley added kayak fishing to his arsenal of angling tools 8 years ago. His normal range is to paddle about 3 miles out just off the beach. Kayaks, he said, can be equipped with everything from rod holders to depth finders. About the only electronic is radar.
When he wants to go after bigger game fish, he loads his kayak in a larger powerboat and goes offshore. The powerboat becomes the "mother ship."
"You really expand your horizons," he said.
Burnley always believes that his next big fish will be the one he will always remember and eventually tell his grandkids about.
In the meantime, he remembers an epic battle one of his buddies had with a bluefin tuna.
The fish weighed 166 pounds, pulled the kayak for 2 1/2 miles and took him 1 1/2 hours to reel in, he said.
Burnley knows that kayak fishing has its risks.
"You have to be aware of the weather," he said. "You always have to have a contingency plan."
With a kayak, you are so close to the water, you can see and feel changes quickly, "probably because you're also scared to death half the time," he said. "You really are out there all alone. ... I'm sure my mother worries. My dad is probably pretty proud."
Thompson and Kim's apparent deaths -- within months of each other -- raised awareness in Delaware of the risk of fishing the inlet rocks.
Scott Newlan, a state fisheries biologist and avid fisherman, knew Thompson as an experienced angler.
At low tide, the rocks at the jetty are exposed and they are covered in mussels, slime and algae, which makes them slippery.
Newlan said most of the regular anglers at the inlet wear special spikes on their boots to improve traction.
Still, "you're not Spiderman," he said. "You still can slip around."
And the folks who target the really big fish like to be on the ends of the jetties.
"You're kind of out there where the waves are breaking," he said. Thompson, however, was "experienced enough it shouldn't have happened."
Since Thompson disappeared, a lot of the regular fishermen have started wearing inflatable life vests, he said.
State park enforcement officers -- the team that monitors the inlet area -- are wearing the vests once they get beyond the handrails on the rocks, Savidge said.
Newlan said it's not unusual for people to slip on the rocks and fall but as long as you are wearing the specialized cleats, you can pull yourself back up, he said.
Fisherman Kevin Stoeckel of Stockley said when his children were small, he took them fishing off the rocks at Indian River Inlet, casting their lines for them and then telling them to stay put.
But he worried the entire time, concerned someone would fall.
"We stayed near the bridge," he said.
Surf fisherman Charles Feiser, of Souderton, Pa., said he'll stick to the beach.
"My extreme days are past," said the World War II veteran and grandfather of 18. "Nice and easy wins the race."
When he looks at the anglers out on the jetty, he questions what he sees.
"To me, that's ridiculous, dangerous," he said.
He caught his limit in bluefish in a matter of hours one day last week.
Still, the lure of the rocks is strong, according to fishermen. Both striped bass and tautog -- another popular game fish -- find food and shelter in the crevices, making the Indian River Inlet a real hot spot.
A handrail runs along part of the rock jetty but often, serious fishermen venture farther out, according to regulars.
Don Avondolio, who more than a decade ago founded the Saltwater Fly Anglers of Delaware -- of which Thompson was a member -- said Thompson "fished the points which is the extreme end."
Avondolio said night fishing also is attractive because there is less boat traffic and the water can be calmer, he said. "And it's less crowded. You don't get a lot of amateurs."
Striped bass are called rockfish for a reason, said Bill Baker Jr., a friend of Thompson's and manager of Bill's Sport Shop near Lewes. "You can't catch rockfish when you are fishing from the sand."
Still, even with the cleats, rockfish don't come during the calm and warm summer months.
The fish migrate north to south and back again in the fall and spring.
Typically, Savidge said, anglers who fish the jetty have on heavy boots and clothing to help stay dry. And they tie bait buckets around their waists, "which only makes them sink faster if they should fall in," he said.
Contact Molly Murray at 463-3334 or mmurray@delawareonline.com.
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