Swimming With the Fishes: Anglers Tangle Over 'Skishing'

Swimming With the Fishes: Anglers Tangle Over 'Skishing'

By Christopher Rhoads

Source: The Wall Street

7/26/2010

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.
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."