A fish tale and a SHARKATHON!!!

This was a fun weekend! Mark is a leader in a young men's group at church and this weekend the participated in an annual, overnight fishing derby/tournament. Off they went to the gulf of mexico near the texas/louisiana border. After setting up camp on the beach, the tournament began at 9:30PM Friday and went through until 10:00AM Saturday morning. After several hours of casting to nets into the surf to catch "mullet" or bait, one of the other teams reeled in this big 45 pound "Bull Red" aka Drum fish. In fact, several of these were pulled in over the course of the tourney.

While Mark and some of the other die-hards continued to fish, some of the other boys fled to one of the other leader's trucks in order to escape the 45 pound mosquitos (well, they sure seemed quite large and very numerous). After several minute's one of the boys said to the others "Cool, look at the toy snake that ****** has on his steering wheel!" When they realized that the "toy" was moving, they figured it was a good time to exit the car. Turns out it was a live "copperhead", which is a poisonous snake. What was funny about the situation was that the leader's wife had actually seen the same snake on the hood of the car 1 week earlier and about 2.5 hours northwest in houston. Which means this snake had actually been living in the car for the week. When trying to get it out, our slithering friend slid right into the A/C vent. No problem, after a few minutes with the heat on full blast, the snake decided he had enough and left the vehicle.

This was no typical fishing tournament. And although the goal was shark, the rules stipulated that we must utilize these sea kayaks to get the job done. So out we would go into the pitch black surf with nothing between us and a sea of hungry sharks but these kayaks and a hook. Sometimes we'd go of the coast about a mile before setting our bait. An exhilarating experience even without catching anything.

Well, about 1:45AM we set, fought, and reeled in this approximately 5ft, 75-80lb lady. A bull shark (man eater)! 100 points for a shark and 100 points for the biggest fish along with the plenty of other 10pt catfish that our team caught assured us the "golden chum bucket". We were the tournament winners! (Must have had something to do with Mark's lucky shark swimsuit)

Here is a picture of the young angler who finished pulling her in. This was certainly no fishtale but a SHARKATHON!! Yes, we did fillet the shark and will enjoy some nice shark steaks in the coming days.