Report from clarion ledger......
Chris Haynes Jr., the Jackson businessman bitten by a
shark over the weekend, is still in a hospital recovering - and is even considering going back to the same spot.
"He's fine," Chip Haynes said of his father. "He's not nearly as shocked about it as the rest of us."
Haynes Jr., 62, is listed in fair condition at the University of Mississippi Medical Center following preliminary surgery on Monday.
Surgeons at the Jackson hospital "made an incision on his foot to see what's going on, cleaned it out really well, and will wait until Wednesday to try and fix it," Chip Haynes said.
Haynes Jr. was bitten on the foot Saturday as he and others fished for
speckled trout in waist-high water near Breton Sound, about 85 miles southeast of New Orleans. On Wednesday, surgeons will try to repair damaged tendons in his foot, his son said.
Chip Haynes, 20, was one of a half-dozen Jackson-area men on the fishing trip who witnessed the attack on his father, the owner of Chris Haynes Electric Supply Inc. in Jackson.
Joe Gex, 45, of Ridgeland was another.
"We love fishing the Breton Sound and had gotten a good fishing report from Curlew Island, south of Breton Island," Gex said.
"We had done this routine many times without any hitches, other than bug bites or a hook in the finger.
"Who would have thought there would be a shark attack?"
Curlew Island, site of the attack, has been under water the past few years, Gex said. "You have to find it with a GPS."
The fishing party anchored Haynes Jr.'s 30- to-34-foot boat, The Predator, on Saturday morning near the island. Because they were catching mostly ladyfish, they moved farther north.
That's where Gex caught a five-pound speckled
trout.
"Then Chris Jr. came over to join me," Gex said. "And I looked in the water and said, 'There's a pretty good shark in front of us.'
"As soon as I said it, the shark, just as fast as he could, ran into Chris.
"I asked him if he was OK, and he said, 'He knocked me down but didn't bite me.' "
A couple of the men in the fishing party climbed into the boat; but Gex, Chris Haynes Jr. and others stayed put.
"About five minutes later, I heard my son, Joseph yell, 'Shark!' " Gex said.
"This time, he attacked Chris and wouldn't let go."
Standing on The Predator about 300 yards away, Chip Haynes saw his father drop.
"I thought it was a stingray at first," he said.
Gex and George Stewart helped the injured man limp toward The Predator while Chip Haynes guided the boat as close to them as he dared in the shallow water.
"There was a lot of blood, Gex said. "He was bleeding in the water with the sharks."
On the boat, the men used towels on Haynes Jr.'s leg as a tourniquet and held them together with electrical tape.
They radioed the Coast Guard, which sent a helicopter to take Haynes Jr. to a New Orleans-area hospital. Later, an ambulance transported him to UMC.
As on other trips, the anglers had kept their catch on stringers that floated on the water behind them.
The stringers are hooked to belts the anglers wear, said Walter Moses, a salesman with Haynes Jr.'s business who wasn't able to make this trip.
"If a shark hits your stringer, you've got to have the presence of mind to undo your hook from the belt; if you don't, you're going with the shark," Moses said.
"A few years ago, a shark went after my fish, and I was almost dinner."
One expert advises anglers against using stringers.
"You're basically sending a signal to any shark nearby that here's a free meal," said Eric Hoffmayer, shark biologist at Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs.
The shark who bit Haynes Jr. could have been a bull, lemon, black-tip or tiger, he said.
"They can all get relatively large and do a lot of damage."