Shark Huntin

I can cross another item off of my bucket list as I finally got my first taste of Ocean Fishing. Instead of Peter, James and John, three basketball coaches headed to Galveston for a little sea adventure. I love to fish, but I have no clue how to fish the great unknown. 

We were told the best fish to catch were Red Fish, Snapper, or Flounder, but anything that would bite sounded good to me. Truth is the first goal is always to avoid the L. Get something in the boat!

The other two coaches were blessed to bring their young sons so between the five of us, there was plenty of smack talking on who was gonna catch the biggest, most, etc…

The first day we bought some live shrimp and found a bridge a did some fishing on our own without a guide. We found our way under a big bridge to stay out of the heat and fished the peers. It paid off as we got on the board scoring a couple nice Red Fish and even caught a crab. All that did was wet our appetite for the fish charter we had set up for two days later! 

6 am comes early unless you are going fishing so we all jumped out of bed and headed to the bay to meet our guide. Captain Jon! The Lord blessed us with a beautiful day perfect for some good fishin! 

Captain Jon looked like he walked straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I knew though the minute I saw him there was something special about him that I liked. We spent the first hour fishing next to the Jetty catching every kind of smaller fish you could imagine including a small hammer head shark and a sting ray. It was a good time, but we were all excited when Captain Jon’s asked if we were ready to catch some big fish! 

After an extended boat ride out into the gulf a ways, Captain Jon puts some live bait on the one big fish pole we had in the boat and cast it into the deep blue sea. He says, “Now we wait boys, catching a big shark takes patience!”

Over the next 15-20 minutes Captian Jon and I had a conversation about pretty much everything one can imagine. It wasn’t until our conversation came to the moment that Captain Jon began to share his testimony that God seemed to step directly into the boat. It was at that moment that a good size black tip shark chose to hit and run our baited rod and reel. Coincidence? 

One might think until you hear Captain Jon’s testimony. He was guiding a charter in Sept of 2016 focused on catching Reds. Despite working hard to find fish, he was only able to help his crew catch three lonely Reds that day. His luck that day was similar to what his life had reckoned upon. Captain Jon let me know that he had came to the end of his rope and was ready to give up. That is until he accidentally took a picture of the three Redfish he caught that day. 

God could not have spoke any louder or any more divinely as He did in that moment to Captain Jon. On the tail of the three Redfish clearly in the picture you see below are the letters, “I  ❤️‍🔥  U”.