We're seated at the long table in Alaska's Bistro down on Fidalgo Street with a view of Valdez harbor. Orange alpenglow lights up the Chugach glaciers, a pastel of moored fish boats falls through the wall of windows, across the silverware, white linen, and seeping water glasses. Halibut stuffed with crab and soused in béarnaise sauce is going cold on the plate.

Brandon has hooked us, pulled us into his shark story, mesmerized us with detail, captured us with gusto, skewered us with descriptions and whetted us with predictions of what tomorrow might be.

Shark stories in Alaska, dinner with a 30-year-old disciplic diehard who touches the exclamation points with his fork, gushes with passion, recounts with respect and is clearly a devoted PWS sharker. A Prince William Sound sharker!

Brandon Nemec is one of a handful of charter skippers riding point in Alaska's hottest new big game fishery – salmon sharks, seemingly misplaced enigmas 10-feet long, up to a 1000 pounds, 50 mph reel burners, first cousin to a mako, second cousin to great white.

Across the bay, at the end of Dayville Road, just past the Solomon Gulch Fish Hatchery, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company is pumping 42 million gallons of oil a day, and living down the infamous 1989 Good Friday encounter at Bligh Reef, softening the ride with big paychecks, economic stability, environmental breakthroughs, and mitigation salmon.

The next morning a trio of whiskered sea otters – once the poster casualties of the great Exxon Valdez spill are floating on their backs munching shellfish in front of the pump stations when Brandon points the bow of the 25-foot Trophy at a fog bank on the far side of the Valdez Narrows – and hopefully a salmon shark encounter. I'm aching to motor mooch a plug cut coho salmon on a 20/0 stainless steel hook for a quarter-ton of nasty shark teeth.

This is a package too tough to pass up: Tangling with monster sharks in salmon country, bunking in a colorful port town deep in a fjord surrounded by North America's tallest coastal mountains and the most heavily glaciated range in the Northwest, where sea level snow fall averages 27 feet, salmon are caught off the public dock, and both the oil spill of '89 and the 9.2 earthquake of '64 took place on Good Fridays.

Salmon sharks migrate in and out of a lot of Alaska (and B.C. and Washington) waters, but the largest known concentration is where Prince William Sound meets the Gulf of Alaska. Port Gravina, which is closer to the landlocked community of Cordova than Valdez, is the hottest of the hot spots. "From the air," Brandon says, "you can sometimes see literally thousands," of the 200 to 800 pound sharks ghosting under the surface, wraiths with teeth, wakes with triangular fins.

But, he adds, sharkers can also count on Port Fidalgo and, we're hoping, Bear Cape on Hinchinbrook Island because that's where we're headed.

Our two-day plan is to tackle Valdez's voracious combination of salmon sharks and silver salmon. The next time I draw up a Valdez itinerary it will also include a couple of additional days for halibut and ling cod and stream wading for grayling and Dolly Varden that squeeze in between the 26 million pinks that gorge this area.

Valdez is one of those rare Alaskan "fishing paradises" with highway connections to the rest of North America. Located at the head of Prince William Sound, southeast of Anchorage, Valdez is on the Richardson Highway, 305 wilderness miles from Anchorage and 2,361 miles from Seattle. Ferries on the Alaska Marine Highway system also dock here.

TRN publisher/editor Jim Goerg and I arrived by air in the late afternoon on August 9 on an ERA commuter flight from Anchorage International Airport. The 40 minutes between Anchorage and Valdez are more flightseeing spectacular than commuter hop boring, a low-level crossing of wrinkled ice fields, monstrous glacial swaths, trackless peaks, heather basins and blue-green fjords salted with ice bergs.

We were met at the airport by Sharon Crisp, executive director of the Valdez Convention and Visitors Bureau, who had arranged for us to stay at Swifty's Lodge & Charters on Mineral Creek at the edge of town. The personable owner, Bob Swift, is Brandon's grandfather. The lodge is an interesting blend of comfortable sleeping rooms, a great room with library, television and fish stories, and a cook-it-yourself kitchen. Meals aren't provided at the lodge, but the kitchen is well equipped. And there are 11 restaurants in this town of 4100.

It's a two-hour 70 mile boat ride to Bear Cape, riding a GPS course and radar through thick fog, past sea otters, humpback whales, and mysteries we can't identify.

Curiously, almost all of the salmon sharks in Alaska are females, while on the Russian coast the salmon shark population is 90 percent male. Uncharacteristically for the genus, salmon sharks are only found in the Pacific Ocean from California to Alaska, and from Russia to Korea.

For scientific identification salmon sharks are Lamna ditropis. Lamna is from a Greek word meaning "voracious fish" a mythological creature, Brandon says with a grin, that parents in ancient Greece used to scare children into good behavior.

Even scarier is a 1998 Japanese scientific estimate that between 76 and 146 million Pacific salmon are eaten by these efficient predators, roughly 25-percent of the entire Pacific salmon population.

"We don't know a lot about salmon sharks in Alaska," Brandon says, "and what we do know has come mostly from sport fishermen."

Females can live at least 25 years, males 27, and they start to breed at seven to 10 years old. Salmon sharks have the highest body temperature of any shark maintaining a core temperature of 78 degrees, which enables them to live in frigid north Pacific waters and dive more than 800 feet.

The salmon shark population has been steadily increasing throughout Alaska, especially in Prince William Sound. ADFG opened a commercial trial fishery in 1996, but it was so brutally successful that they shut it down in 1997 pending conclusive studies.

Sport fishermen are allowed to kill 1 shark a day, 2 a year. The sharks show up in July with the first big runs of pink salmon, and leave in the early fall – on a mating rendezvous with the Russian males.

Brandon books 20 shark trips a year, and according to Sharon, he's the acknowledged shark expert of Valdez. A couple of charter outfitters book shark trips as backups to halibut and salmon, but for Brandon, salmon sharks are a passion, top rung on the big game challenge.

"I don't call this fishing, it's hunting, big fish hunting," he says, adding, "Shark fishing is the most dangerous fishing there is. Big hooks, gaffs, hundreds of pounds of animal, wire leaders, teeth, firearms – it doesn't get any more dangerous than that combination." A pair of bang sticks, one 12 gauge, one .357 caliber ride in the rack with harpoons and stout gaff hooks.

Brandon hits a mark on the GPS and cuts the engines. There's a faint white orb in the high fog that might be the sun, and the sound of waves breaking on rocks.

"We're here," he says.

"Watch for fins."

An unexpected shot of adrenalin spits through the boat, a quiet excitement that's almost palpable, different than salmon fishing, a little edgy.

With a gaff Brandon whacks a 5-gallon plastic buck that's packed with oils, salmon bits, eggs, and herring goo that only a shark could love. The punctured chum bucket is lowered over the rail and tied off on a cleat; a natural slick spreads down current – millions of times smaller than anything that leaked from the Exxon Valdez.

"Sharks can detect odors at 1 part per million," Brandon says, "They'll be attracted by the chum slick floating on the current, home in and see the baits. That's the theory."

Shark tackle is impressive: 6-foot Shakespeare Sturdy Stix, rated for 60 pound line, with Penn Senators 9/0 and 14 H loaded with 750 yards of 150 lb. test Tuff Line: The leader is 20 feet of 800 lb. test braided steel cable, attached with 800 lb. test barrel swivels

At the end is a 20/0 stainless steel shark hook and a plug cut 8 lb. silver salmon. (Commercially caught and bought. It's illegal to use sport-caught silvers for bait, according to Brandon.)

The coho is cut near the middle. The tail half goes on one hook and rolls in the current like 4 pounds of cut plug. The head end is impaled on the second rig.

What are we looking for, I ask.

"The steep and the deep," he replies.

"Places where the shoreline edges out, and plunges steeply into the depths – 400 feet or more. I often see (on the electronics) sharks at 300 feet, circling waiting for a run of salmon to arrive overhead, silhouetted against the sky.

When the salmon swim overhead, the sharks come up like torpedoes to feed. I've seen them rocket out of the water with salmon in their teeth, splattering salmon into the air when they fall back. It's neat. Really neat! "

The fog hangs thick.

We're on edge, crusing, quietly, slowly, hunting. I spot a shark fin that turns into a sea lion flipper. "Nope," Brandon answers, "I've never seen or heard of a salmon shark eating seals or sea lions. And they don't seem to bother divers, either. Sea birds sometimes, but mostly fish."

Twenty minutes into the suspense and Brandon spots a fin. And suddenly we're surrounded. I count half a dozen gray black fins cutting around the boat, homing in on the chum, ignoring us.

The fog starts to lift, more fins materialize, big hulking triangles that fairly hiss through the water. Several nose into our baits and turn away.

I climb out on the bow-sprit and with Polaroid glasses watch the big predators, some streaming directly under my feet. Huge green and white grinners homing in on the chum line, powerful thick tapered bodies, boneless muscle. They look gray with white bellies that are spotted like a dalmation.

Tension mounts. Rods nod in holders, sharks swirl past, vee wakes and Peter Benchley jokes.

It's a light bite, tentative tugs. Not what I'm expecting from a quarter ton of predator.

"Let her eat it,"

More tugs, a yard maybe two slips off, then several yards, and suddenly the rod smashes down and 150 lb. test line drains into the ocean. I glance at Brandon, he watches, waits, then nods and I set the hook, rocking hard onto my heels, heaving against – nothing.

"Drop it back, drop it back.

I dip the rod, and jig it slightly, jigging 4 pounds of salmon, for 500 pounds of shark.

Twice more I feel her pick up, chew it, mouth it, spit it.

She's gone.

I start to breathe again.

"I don't understand that," Brandon says, "usually once they take it, they keep it,"

Weird all right. Like standing in a trout pool of dimples throwing perfect presentations to non-takers.

We're surrounded by fins slicing the surface and dark spots on the locator marking sharks down to 100 feet. A monster shark slips past, the fin more than a foot above the surface. "That's the biggest shark I've seen here yet," Brandon says.

"Don't worry," he adds, "I get sharks 99 percent of the time." I'm starting to get a bad feeling about that 1 percent.

Bear Cape is out of the fog and shining in sunlight. Sea lions roll in the kelp. The mainland comes into view. Sun spears bounce off wet triangles.

At noon the rod goes down and stays down. Line squirts off the reel, dives into the ocean. I let it run until it stops. The Tuff Line is a telegraph. I can feel the shark rip the bait, turn it, roll it in its mouth. Crunch it. Then the big fish is running runs hard, and straight away. A 10 count and I hammer it, three times I set the hooks, dig in and rear back hard enough to flip a flying pickup truck .

Jim starts his watch.

Brandon fastens the fighting belt around my waist.

Average time to play a salmon shark, according to Brandon, is 20 to 40 minutes. Some battles have gone 2 hours, usually when the angler wears out but won't hand off the rod.

"I've seen some big guys, tall talkers bragging about how they will wind a shark through the rod guides," Brandon says, "then 5 minutes into the fight and they're begging someone to take the rod, to give them a break."

These are serious fish with multiple layers of razor teeth, a skin rough enough to cut steel that can swim faster than a dog can run. This has the feel of a serious fish. I've caught 11-foot white sturgeon and I think this torpedo could turn that oversizer around.

We settle in, I'm feeling good, out of control, but good in a shout at the devil kind of way.

Jim's grinning.

The shark is on for a few seconds longer than 3 minutes and then it simply turns me loose. Opens its mouth and spits. I nearly fall over backwards.

"She just didn't swallow it." Brandon says. "After all that, she didn't swallow it. That's real strange. Maybe they're full. They've been gorging on pinks for weeks now. Maybe they're just too full to eat."

After 8 hours of alternately, trolling, drifting, jigging, mooching the novelty of mooching cut plug silvers in a shark bowl has worn off. Dozens of triangles are shining in sunlight when we pack it in. Give up on Bear Cape and head up Sound to Port Fidalgo.

Before the gear is out, we see fins and wakes.

Brandon slow trolls up and down a shoreline that plunges from a mountainside into 200 feet of water – the steep and the deep. Sun spears into the saltwater. There's a light wind chop.

The port corner rod slams down and bounces up.

Jim climbs into the fighting belt, while Brandon clears the rod, gets a strong two-handed grip and when enough line has sizzled off the spool he sets the wicked 20/0 hook. Again. Again. Again. Jim jams the butt in the belt, gets both hands locked in a choke hold high on the grip. Line streams off and then explodes into raw speed, an unstoppable run toward shore.

"This is it, this is it," Brandon is screaming," we're into him. He's got it. He's got it. Keep the line tight. Keep it tight or it'll spit. Wahoo. We're into him.

The Valdez Sharkmeister is hollering, I'm hollering. We're all grinning, and watching line sizzle off the reel. The big rod is bucking. Jim holds on, set-jawed. It's hard to tell where the bend in his back ends and the curve of the rod begins. Brandon checks the reel..."plenty of line, plenty of line."

Jim's grin turns to grimace. He's hooked into hundreds of pounds of muscle a quarter ton of no-quarter attitude. "Three minutes, 5 minutes, 6 minutes. Jim is fighting hard – there's no hang on and wait here, he's fighting every inch of the way, battling for control.

"Sounding, sounding, it's going down," someone yells. The line angle to water widens until it reaches the rod tip and pulls it straight toward the green chop. Eight minutes, 10.

"Crank him through the guides," I chide.

Brandon laughs.

Jim doesn't budge. Doesn't laugh.

This is serious work.

I'm not sure when the line went slack. Sometime after 10 minutes.

It was just over.

Jim speed cranks for awhile hoping the behemoth is running at the boat, slack lining him like a salmon, but not this time.

Slowly, horribly, we realize the worst. The voracious Greek myth is gone. It's almost 10 p.m. We've been on the water 15 hours and the shark is gone. Twenty feet of braided 800 lb. test stainless steel leader is gone. 20/0 hook gone. 2 pounds of cannonball lead gone.

"He wrapped" Brandon said. "He wrapped up, and slapped the line with his tail. It cuts like a knife. They do that a lot. If they get their head they'll roll, wrap and cut the line. It's tough to stop...nothing you could do. Nothing.

Jim sets the rod down, leans on the rail. Looks at the water.

We troll drift, mooch, and chum. Brandon works live a dervish. He's frantic to hook us up. Frantic to fight again. The sun is sinking, fog is settling in turning everything purple. It's late. The heart is gone. We're done.

Brandon finally agrees. He winds in the gear.

A hundred feet behind him I see a black fin cut the surface, slice into the silver backlighting, cut through the wake. I point and Jim looks and nods. Brandon works with the gear head-down, oblivious. We say nothing.

When you fish often and long and go out of your way to challenge the improbable; on some of those days you have know that you'll be the 1 percent.

Tomorrow we go for silvers – salmon in shark country or maybe it's the other way around.