Extreme Method Puts Fishermen Deep in Water; Casting Aside Critics
MONTAUK, N.Y.—Fishing hasn't changed much over the years. Then along came Paul Melnyk. During a surfcasting tournament here in the mid-1990s, Mr. Melnyk landed a striped bass large enough to be in contention. Then word got around that he was swimming offshore in a wetsuit with a fishing rod when he caught it. Paul Melnyk believes that the best way to catch a bass off of Montauk, Long Island, is to jump in after it. He invented a form of fishing in which the fish pulls him through the water, as if he were skiing. Thus was born, Skishing. Christopher Rhoads reports. The tournament committee responded by banning fish caught while swimming. Later—after an incident involving an irate Mr. Melnyk in pirate garb, Captain Morgan rum and floating his baited line hundreds of yards from shore with a kite—it banned Mr. Melnyk. "They called it a crooked playing field," says Mr. Melnyk, a 55-year-old who works in construction. "I don't care about that—I care about winning." Instead of complying with the rules, Mr. Melnyk went rogue. He committed himself to his fishing method, attracting others with a penchant for the extreme. Today, they're challenging what it means to fish. A recent YouTube video shows a man swimming in Florida with a mask, snorkel and flyrod, catching a tarpon. ZeeBaaS, a fishing-gear company in Stratford, Conn., recently added a section to its product line and website devoted to the activity. Cable channels, like National Geographic, have featured it. Enthusiasts sharing tales on websites hail from the U.K., Turkey and South Africa. "There used to be a whole bunch of people against this concept," says Mr. Melnyk, whose right shoulder is covered with a tattoo of a skeleton, holding up a massive skeleton of a fish. "But there's a new generation of fishermen out there." Practitioners interviewed agree he coined the sport's name: "skishing." It's a mix of skiing and fishing. The idea is to hook a fish big enough to tow the angler through the water. Stripers can reach more than 50 pounds; the record caught with rod-and-reel weighed 78-1/2 pounds. Without the benefit of a boat or land, the fight is considered to be, by the fisherman anyway, on more equal terms. Skishers swim sometimes hundreds of yards from shore to water well over their head, with their flippers and the buoyancy of their wetsuits keeping them afloat. Some have come to skishing by persevering to become a protégé of Mr. Melnyk, who prefer skishing alone. Frank Blasko, a 39-year-old in the motion-picture lighting business in Bayport, Long Island, pestered Mr. Melnyk for several years with phone calls and emails, even offering him $300 if he would show him the ropes. Mr. Melnyk finally relented. "I needed a new carburetor on my chopper," he says. Mr. Blasko, who's making a documentary on the sport called "The Skisherman," describes the attraction this way: "I just like to get out in the middle of the night, catch a monster and have it splash its tail in my face."
Acceptance of skishing—and of Mr. Melnyk—has its limits. "I hope you get eaten by a shark," wrote one commenter on Mr. Melnyk's website, calling him a cheater. Mr. Melnyk says he receives hate mail, admonishing him for promoting such a dangerous activity. Among other risks: boats and strong currents whipping skishers out to sea. Skishing is typically done at night, when bass are thought to do most of their feeding. Since skishers can catch fish just beyond the reach of traditional surfcasters in waders, the skishers are sometimes blamed for scaring fish away or catching what might otherwise belong to the purists closer to shore. Mr. Blasko, Mr. Melnyk's protégé, says he's been hooked twice by surfcasters, probably intentionally. Cursing is common. As he prepares to head out to sea, Paul Melnyk shows off the eels he uses as bait to catch striped bass. Before suiting up, he usually drives along the beach in his pickup truck in the pre-dawn hours, looking for good spots to fish. Gary Stephens, a 54-year-old landscaper nicknamed "The Toad" for his ability to jump over car hoods, is a traditional surfcaster and is considered Mr. Melnyk's main rival for bragging rights among locals. "Wetsuiters have a clear advantage," says Mr. Stephens. "If they think that's fun, that's fine. I stick with the fishing." Once, when Mr. Melnyk was skishing far from shore, a fishing-boat captain, startled to see a person in the water with a fishing rod, came up alongside him and derided him as a "menace to navigation," Mr. Melnyk recalls."That's when I started carrying a knife," he says. The annual surfcasting tournaments, held from spring to late fall here on the eastern end of Long Island—a place some locals call a drinking town with a fishing problem—forbid skishing. The rules read like they were written for Mr. Melnyk. "Feet must be on mother earth or rock when you hook up," reads Rule No. 4. "No free-floating, drifting or swimming while actually fishing. No boats, prams, kayaks, balloons or kites." Fred Kalkstein, a member of the executive committee for the locals-only tournament, says skishing "will never be allowed." It gives the practitioner too much of an advantage, he says. "It's not surfcasting," says Mr. Kalkstein, an East Hampton stockbroker nicknamed "Eelman" for using only eels as bait when striper fishing. "They're using their body as a boat." But some views have softened. About ten years ago, a separate wetsuit division was created. Old-timers protested, but today about 15 of the customary 50 participants don wetsuits, allowing them to swim to rocks from which to cast. Mr. Melnyk was eventually invited back, though he's mostly declined. Maneuvering his pickup along a beach here one night in the pre-dawn cold, Mr. Melnyk spotted waves crashing about 200 yards from shore. He crammed his thick frame into a wetsuit, strapped on a ziploc bag of live eels and, with a fishing rod under his arm, clomped past startled fishermen on shore in his yellow flippers and swam out to sea. Within minutes, as dawn broke, he bobbed in the swells in about 15 feet of frigid water. Birds dove at the baitfish around him. After some casts, he reeled in a small bass. He put a short rope from his waist through its gills, so he could continue to fish. Finally, he made his way through the heavy surf back to the beach, just in time to see one of the surfcasters from shore trudge by with a 25-pounder. "Hey!" Mr. Melnyk shouted. "That should've been mine!"
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