Deep in the Heart of Texas: Fish on!

I love Jeremy Wade of River Monsters in a way I will never love you, readers.  That is, as a TV personality.

If you are a TV personality reading this blog, let me know so that I can both apologize and brag about it.

Joel, if you're out there, drop me a line (Yes, that's a fishing pun)

 So, it was with great pleasure I got to join the bromance open water fishing trip for my birthday.  Thanks Granny and Cathy for setting it up and making it possible.

Those not familiar with the concept, fishing is man's work.  That's right, I said it.

So is mopping.  Mopping is man's work.

So it was a special occasion (my birthday) that I got invited to go.  It also helps that I'm kind of a bro myself.  I don't mind getting dirty, drinking beer, and off-color jokes don't offend me.  I am perfectly capable of making jokes, both at the expense of myself and sometimes my gender (I know, how unfeminist of me), but it goes over well with the target audience on this trip: old white guys.

Uncles Jim and Danny, humoring me by posing

It was a chartered, guided fishing trip on a 27 foot boat off of Galveston Island in the Gulf of Mexico.  If you don't know where that is, here's a completely unhelpful Google Maps link.

Captain Shannon was the most tanned person I've ever seen.

That includes George Hamilton

I guess that comes from spending day after day ferrying tourists out into the gulf and baiting their hooks for them.  You could tell he seemed a bit burned out on giving tours by the way he spent the first half of the trip going through the motions of his job while planning a family vacation on his iPhone.  I would have thought you couldn't get cell service out on the open water, but hey, I still think that Wi-fi is voodoo magic, so what do I know?

Can you hear me now?

It was an enjoyable afternoon of fishing with my Uncle Danny, Uncle Jim, and Dad.  I didn't interfere with the natural fishing traditions (drinking beer and talking about your woman problems at all).  I saw porpoises in the wild for the first time.  Unfortunately, I'm not a skilled enough photographer to have captured it on film, but it was amazing.  I did get this photo however:

Bam!

That's right, I caught a shark.  Here's me reeling that 40 pound monster in, with a little help from my dad.

Because that's what Dad's are for.

The most exciting moment actually came when we hooked something unexpected:  a tarpon.  We knew it was something special because the captain jumped up and started yelling.  He called it "a fish of a lifetime."  It looks just like the movies.  The fish gets hooked and starts breaching the water in its struggles to free itself.  As it gets reeled in more and more you see it breech the water closer and closer...and it was Dad's turn to reel it in.

He got that fish all the way to the boat. 

Objects in photo are larger than they appear.

He caught a 175 pound tarpon (and then called all his friends, please kindly refer to him as Tarpon Tim henceforth).  It would have been nice to pull it up on deck and take some awesome photos with it, but if we had gaffed it and pulled it up on deck, it probably would have died, and you don't eat a tarpon (too many small bones), so we let it resume its struggles with time and tide (and the current tarpon fishing tournament).  The only fish we kept was the shark that I caught my second time on rotation.  A nice medium sized shark, perfect for eating.  Captain Shannon cut it up into steaks for us and we took it home and ate it. 

Not Pictured:  Family togetherness

Well, not that night.  The after-fishing spot for dinner is Twin Peaks, a breastaraunt with beer served at 28 degrees Fahrenheit.  So we went there.  The food was excellent, but like all breastaurants (Hooters, Bikinis, Tilted Kilt, etc.), the service is less than mediocre (our waitress was a Bambi-in-Training).  But we toasted the fish, the boat, the captain, and had an all around good time.

And I caught a shark.   Don't call it a freaking fish Dan...

"I resent that."