Apparently you are not a good fisherman, if you don't tell tall tales.  So, in light of being informed that I needed to share, I'm sharing my fishing story.  Zack has a really nice boat, and he's been deep sea fishing for about the last decade.  He's taken most of the family out several times.  The guys have gone a few times.  Heather is great at hunting and fishing, and she's been a few times.  Joan Ellen also went when they took out some of the nieces.  I however, had never been fishing with Zack and Amanda.

Now, I don't swim all that well, and though I enjoy fishing, I wasn't real excited about being that far way from land.  I went along solely, because Gary wanted to go and I wanted to spend our anniversary together.  I must have lucked out because that morning when we left the water was as smooth as a mirror, and we had a fast and easy ride out.  I was amazed at just how blue the water was out there.  Growing up my favorite color in the big crayon box was cerulean blue, and that's EXACTLY what the water looked like.

Anyway, we caught several fish, that weren't any good so we threw them back.  The most fun was when the Mahi Mahi started swimming around the boat.  The first time they came by we couldn't get them to bite.  Mister said they have such good eyesight, that they can see the hook, if you don't have it pretty well hidden.  They are beautiful fish.  One came right up and bumped the foot I had trailing in the water as I was trying to keep cool.  They came by later though and must have been starving to death, because all of a sudden they were biting anything and everything.  One of the ones I caught I accidently dropped the line before I got it baited again.  No joke.  At one point we had about four flopping around in the boat.  And oh my goodness those fish are fighters.  They will beat themselves to death in the boat, tearing their lips off, bleeding everywhere.  Amanda got slapped upside the head by one.  We lost a few before we could get them in the boat, they flail to the point that they work themselves off the hook while they are in the air before you even get them in the boat.

However, what we were really out to catch was grouper.  After the Mahi Mahi got bored (or in my opinion after we caught all the ones who were hungry), I dropped my line all the way down to the bottom.  Now, all I had on there was about a half eaten sardine, from the Mahi Mahi.  I thought I felt a tap, but nothing followed it, so after a minute I started reeling it in.  I figured what ever it was stole the last little bit of bait I had on there.  But all of a sudden, the line went really tight, and I couldn't get the end up in the air, and something was pulling more line out.  When I couldn't get it up, Amanda came over, but she wasn't having any luck either.  We decided that I must have a grouper and that it had gone in it's hole, but that the line was going out because we were drifting.  Zack backed the boat up to where we were before, and Mister took the pole from me to try to get where we could work him out of his hole.  Meanwhile, Amanda had been trying to explain to me how to reel and work him up.  The water was about 90 feet deep there, and it was going to take some work.  I didn't understand what in the world she wanted me to do.  She was making no sense whatsoever, but when Zack got the boat where he wanted it Mister was able to back that fish out of there, and then I could see what Amanda had meant.  After a minute he gave me the pole back, and I started pulling the pole up as high as I could get it and then reeling like a maniac as I lowered it.  I was bracing it against my leg and my arms were killing me, because I have no arm muscles at all. haha.  Then Zack found a belt thing, that I could brace the pole with.  When I finally got it up close enough to see it I couldn't believe how big it was.  Then I'm sure I was entertaining trying to get it into the boat.  I have no balance at all on the water, I really had no balance trying to get this massive fish swung up into the boat.  I was falling all over the place.  But we finally got that thing in there.  It was 26 inches long.  Long enough to keep, and I have no idea how heavy it was, but I couldn't have held it up much longer than it took them to snap the picture.  It was crazy.

I caught another couple of little ones, not big enough to keep.  Gary ended up catching a gar a little later.  Dad caught the most, as he easily caught half the Mahi Mahi.  I caught the biggest.  And as Gary said, he caught the most trash. haha.  We had a good time.  The only down side was being insanely hot with no breeze at all.  Not sure if I do or don't want to go again.  30 miles from land over 90 foot of water.  That's a long way, away if anything goes wrong.  But we had good company, and I did have a good time.  It was a memorable anniversary, and it was great of Zack and Amanda to take us out.