Narrative

It was the summer of 2010 when I took a trip down to Florida with my cousin Clay who’s only a year younger than I am to visit my grandpa. My grandpa and I aren’t very close because he is always moving and living somewhere else so when we three get together we always try and do something fun to bond over. This year we chose to go deep sea fishing with a charter, “The Wise Guy”. It was around 5:00am when we showed up at the dock to get on the boat; I remember being half asleep smelling salty water in the air and dead fish. I fell asleep in the boat for three hours as we rode out to sea. When I woke up the sun was still just coming up and the air was cool. We all put fishing poles in the water with chunks of shrimp on them and sat patiently waiting for anything to bit. It was about noon when the Captain stood up and asked if anyone wanted to have some real fun, I had no idea what he meant by that. He proposed that we go further out to sea and try and catch some sharks. As were going out to sea we stop and I get up and try and grab a pole to cast out  and the Captain said this is just a bait stop, and he grabs a net that look a hundred years old and threw it in to the glassy blue water and let it slowly drift under that water, he then yanks the net and quickly brings it to the surface, and in the net there has to be about seventy-five panicking fish flailing and thrashing their bodies in a desperate attempt to get free. An hour later we finally get to where we want to be, so the Captain hand us these huge fishing poles with fishing line that looked like rope. The Captain takes the bait fish and with a knife in one stroke take four of the fishes heads off and throws then behind the boat.

I asked, “Don’t we need to put the bait on the hook? Why are you throwing it in the water?”

He simply stated, “We need the sharks to come don’t we?”

 He then proceeds to put live fish on the hooks and casts the out behind the boat. He looks at us and says if you get a shark you’ll know it’ll knock you on your ass. But to reel it in you need to lift up on the pole and real down so you don’t put any slake in the line. Now that our poles are in the water the captain turns the boat on and slowly drives forward. We wait. My grandpa gets a hit, it went from silent and boring to everyone screaming and yelling. The shark on his line pulled so hard it nearly pulling him into the water. He put his leg up on the top part on back wall and push back so he could get his footing again then he started to reel. He fought with this monster for forty five minutes until finally the five foot hundred and fifty pound tiger shark appeared at the surface. next clay, were all watching him battle his shark, I was standing next to him with my pole in my hand watching him pull up and reel down, the in the blink of and eye my pole gets a hit this animal grabs my bait so fast and with such force it drags me three feet to the edge of the boat, I have my pole in a death grip  but now I’m leaning over the side of the boat trying to pull myself up, it took my grandpa and the captain to pull me back in the boat. Now I’m ready to pull my shark in, I’m putting all my strength into this I’m lifting up on the pole but it feels like my lines caught on the bottom it seem that as soon as I make and progress he pulls out twice as much line. An hour goes by and I see what’s on the end of my line...its huge, the captain takes one look and says that’s not a shark it a Goliath Grouper. I caught a six and a half foot three hundred pound Goliath grouper.