100-Pound Sailfish Leaps from Water, Spears Woman

BUCK: Do you like to fish?

CLAY: I do kind of enjoy fishing, yes.

BUCK: That was not your most —

CLAY: Well —

BUCK: — football you’d do back flips.

CLAY: Well, because partly it depends. I’ve been out deep-sea fishing, and I’m not a big fan of being on boats when I can’t see land.

BUCK: We’re on the same page here, buddy. I go for this. I’m a fresh… I like freshwater fishing or ocean fishing is fine. I just need to either be on, like, a pier or in sight of land, and if I’m done, I can get on the land. If I see nothing but water, I’m very unhappy. I’m just gonna say.

CLAY: Yeah. I’m not a big boat person when land is not visible. So, I like to fish. I don’t like to fish when I can’t see land.

BUCK: There was this crazy story — and we are gonna bring back at some point here, Clay, officially bring back Clay’s Animal Thunderdome and make it a part of the show because it’s so much fun. People reach out. Everyone loves the boa constrictor gets shot by the cops story ’cause that’s crazy. You’re thinking about how that actually played out. This is a rough one. A hundred-pound sailfish over the weekend leaped out of the water, okay — I guess leapt, leaped — and it actually impaled a 73-year-old woman in the thigh area —

CLAY: Oh, no.

BUCK: — with its pointy, you know —

CLAY: Spear.

BUCK: — spear-mouth thing. It’s a bill which is very sharp.

CLAY: I’ve caught those sailfish before. In South Florida, I’ve been out. They have specific focus. No, you don’t keep ’em. You catch ’em and then you put ’em back in the water so there’s a photo. Yeah, catch-and-release. There’s a photo somewhere of me with one of those big sailfish. And this is terrifying to think that you could be speared, effectively, by this animal.

BUCK: They are incredibly athletic. I’ve gone. I went sail fishing in Costa Rica a long time ago.

CLAY: Did you catch one?

BUCK: I did indeed.

CLAY: Yes. Did you get pictured holding it?

BUCK: I think we have a picture somewhere. I have pictures of me from the same trip with tarpon for sure. They’re just giant, shiny muscles in the water. Tarpon are like 120 pounds of “you’re not going to land me.” And you sit there, like, trying to reel these things in. But, yeah, this woman got impaled by a sailfish. So, you know, you’re out there, you think it’s just another day opening the beers, sailing in the ocean, but you’re dealing with animals. And whether it’s a humpback whale that’s breaching or a sailfish that’s leaping, things can get rough out there.

CLAY: The other time I’ve been deep sea fishing, I lived in the Caribbean, so I was around on boats. Again, if you can see the land, I’m not that troubled by it. We were out — deep-sea fishing way out. St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, I was like in the USVI. It’s where I practiced law to start. We had caught a big barracuda. Barracuda’s getting reeled in. Big shark comes up and eats the barracuda. So, then we had the shark attached to the line, spent all day reeling in that shark, big shark, and when that shark got in the boat, that is a pretty scary moment when you got a shark that big. Again, we caught it, not trying to catch the shark just when it ate the barracuda. Little fish gets eaten by the big fish out there. Nature story for you.