The first stop was at the house of Matt's father to pick up the boat and continue north to our fishing area. Upon hooking up the boat to Matt's vehicle, we were greeted by an intense odor. This was not a pleasant odor, and the worst part is that we could not pinpoint its location. We didn't think much of it, until we left the driveway where something appeared to be sitting in the driveway. Oh well, no big deal, probably just some garbage or something. We trekked onward, and then it hit Matt. Long story short, what we had just run over was a 2-week old rotisserie chicken that had severely decomposed in the driveway......and 25 miles later, the smell was still ingrained into the tires of our vehicle. While a little shaken up, we decided to continue on our trip. We had no idea what we were in store for.
Matt and I were in his boat, and Bill had his boat as well. Needless to say we had quite the fleet to attack our desired sea-dwelling creatures. We hit the water around 7:30am after pick
ing up bait and doing a little detective work to track down Bill's wallet. As suspected, Bill's wallet was right where he left it. We set out towards the fishing grounds and proceeded to have minimal success for the first 5 hours or so of the day. While moving to a new spot, a 70lb tarpon taunted us by doing a cartwheel about 10 feet in front of our boat. It was determined that we would not stand for this behavior out a fish, for we were higher up on the food chain. In order to catch this fish, we would need some more attractive bait. Matt suggested mullet would do the trick. I then asked, "but won't a trailer park haircut just fall off the hook"? I then recalled that there was indeed a bait fish called mullet, so we proceeded to catch some with our cast net.So, we were all set to start landing some serious fish. No more than 15 minutes after tossing our lines out there, Matt's fishing rod bends as our culprit, the tarpon, takes the bait. We confirmed this when he once again taunted us by doing another cartwheel, then promptly busting Matt's line as he took off with a full meal. Little did the sea-creatures know, they were merely fueling our fire. Matt rigged up a more durable fishing setup this time and tossed another mullet out there. About 15 minutes later, the fight was on, and this one was not going to get away. The problem was that there was no fish jumping out of the water, a sure sign of a tarpon. This
was a large creature, so we were puzzled as what it could be. Maybe it was a stingray? Nope, it started to take off like a fish. Well, that settles it. It must be a shark. No worries though, they usually don't get too big in the area where we were fishing. Probably just a few feet long and no more than 50lbs or so. We handed our camera to Bill, untied our boat from his, and were prepared to fight this shark no matter what his size was. The fight was on.After hitting the one hour mark fighting this shark, it was apparent our little friend was not so little. After an hour and fifteen minutes, our shark had finally surfaced. It was then we all realized that the shark Matt was attempting to land was indeed larger than he was. It was later determined that this shark was 5'9" and an estimated 150+lbs, which would have made him the 2nd largest living thing on our boat besides me. Shark meat is quite tasty if prepared and stored properly, so we decided we were going to attempt to take this one home. The problem was that none of the three of us had the slightest clue how to go about this. Bill had the talent to tie a slip-knot to put around the shark's tail, and I had the talent to be stupid enough to stick my hands in the water and tie the shark up. I also had the bright idea of trying to bring a live, 150lb shark on the boat with us.
For safety's sake, it's for the best that this is as far as I got it by myself. The shark was a little more feisty than anticipated.
We decided that we should probably play it safe and let the shark settle down a bit before letting him join us on our "floating boat of idiots". After awhile, Bill joined us on our boat to help finally bring the shark aboard. With his help, we finally had landed our shark and were ready to head home.......the shark had other plans though. About a minute was all this guy could sit still for then he started to make a break for the water by flipping about in the boat. By this time it was massive shark in the front, 3 scared guys in the back. I would like to point out that only one of us screamed like a schoolgirl though. We have it on video and that person knows who they are.After this we were on our way home and everybody was still alive with all appendages still attached. That's a success in my book. No more than 3 hours later we would be feasting on shark steaks.
Final Score:
Boat of Idiots - 1
Feisty Shark - 0
No comments:
Post a Comment