A lap dance with a thresher shark

Jeff Krieger’s wild streak stretches from sprinting naked through a high school graduation ceremony to quitting his construction job to become a fishing guide who specializes in sharks. But he doesn’t land sharks from a boat. He fishes while sitting low in a tippy sea kayak.

Krieger, aka “Rhino,” paddles to sharky waters along the Southern California coast, looks for bait or dorsal fins and tosses lures. That’s when the insanity starts.

“I saw him hook and battle a 150-pound thresher that was leaping and diving for three hours,” recalls Dennis Spike, a kayak-fishing veteran from Canoga Park. “When it got to the kayak, the fish was tired, Rhino was tired, but he grabbed it by the tail, pumped it up and down in the water a few times and then dragged it across his lap, literally wrapping his body around it, tied it to the boat and dispatched it in a most humane manner. Our hair was standing up. It was greatness.”

Thresher sharks are a poor man’s marlin, cheap to catch in local waters (rather than on a Baja charter) and feisty. With mouthfuls of teeth and saber-like tails longer than their bodies, the powerful acrobats can work their opponents from both ends. They flail their tails to wound baitfish and deflect any attackers unintimidated by their size: up to 25 feet and 400 pounds.

Seemingly abundant from Palos Verdes to Carpinteria, thresher sharks cruise along the shore in a zone from the breakers to the outer edge of the kelp and beyond. The Department of Fish and Game permits anglers no more than two thresher sharks per trip, but the small cadre of serious shark fishermen in kayaks say one per year is plenty.

Off Dan Blocker State Beach in Malibu last year, Louis Ciminieri of Burbank hooked a 150-pound thresher that towed him far out to sea. It took 2 1/2 hours to subdue, 40 freezer bags to pack and weeks to heal the wound on his knee where he hoisted the thrashing beast on his lap.

“It’s heart-pumping adrenaline,” Ciminieri recalls.

Krieger’s limbs also bear scars from duels with threshers. One hooked shark whipped the side of his head with its tail, delivering a skull-ringing blow that left a fin-shaped welt. He’s caught dozens of threshers over the past 10 years, including a 220-pound beast 100 yards off Malibu Pier two years ago in an epic battle aboard his Ocean Kayak Malibu 2 XL.

“I was trolling a Rapala and the rod just noodled in half. It [the shark] jumped a few times, then took me on a 40-minute sleigh ride up and down the coast,” Krieger recalls

.

Hooking the fish is easy. Wrestling it into the kayak is not. The only favorable outcome is to get a rope around its tail, grab a knife and slit its heart quickly. Otherwise, bad things happen.

“You don’t want to roll the kayak because you’ll be in the water with the shark,” Krieger says. “And he can bite you, slap you with his tail or impale you with the hooks and drag you under. People say I’m nuts, and it is kind of crazy, but it’s a safe crazy.”

While growing up in Hawaii, Krieger learned to catch big fish from small boats. He later moved to Santa Barbara and Simi Valley, where he lives with his wife and kids, and became among the first to kayak fish for shark off the local coast.

Now 41 and a $350-a-day guide for the past few years, he says the sport demands a lot, making it off-limits to unfit party boaters. You have to pack a ton of gear on the plastic boat: depth finder, rods, cooler, gaff, bait tank, first aid kit, radio, paddle, rope, bilge pump and tackle box. You have to paddle hard to launch without dumping everything in the surf. You catch your own bait. Then you paddle harder to troll big lures and paddle even harder to set hooks. Even an ascended shark shaman like Krieger has been blanked so far in ’04.

But kayak anglers can avoid crowds, dock fees and boat maintenance. And they get to captain their own, albeit small, vessel and go head-to-head with a big fish battling for its life.