A couple days later, our close family friends arrived. Priscilla and her daughter, Layla, are not big into hunting and fishing. But Priscilla's son, Christian, who is my age, and her husband, Sean, are very much into hunting and fishing. It didn't take much to convince them to join me on the deep sea fishing boat.

The morning of our deep sea fishing trip, Sean and Christian teamed up to wake me up at 5:30 in the morning, by violently shaking the bed and ripping off my covers. Obviously, I shot up confused and afraid, and swung a blind fist through the air in an attempt to fend off my attackers just as Sean flicked on the brightest set of lights in my pitch dark room. They laughed at me while I rubbed my eyes and growled obscenities at them under my breath. I was not amused.

It took less than 10 minutes for me to get ready, and I was actually the first one in the car. I already had an adrenaline rush equivalent to ten Mountain Dews in my system, so I left my soda in the fridge. Instead, I planned on buying breakfast on the boat, which I learned through their website had plenty of food for sale aboard.

It took us about an hour to drive to Clearwater. There wasn't too much traffic, although everyone on the road was in no rush to get to their destination. Sean weaved through the traffic the best he could, while Christian and I sat in silence listening to music on our phones. While Sean drove, I checked up on the forecast to see how quickly I'd die of heatstroke on the boat. Thankfully, I learned that while it would be sunny at sea, there'd be a strong, cool northwest wind and increasing clouds through the day. I still needed to load up on salty snacks, Gatorade, water, and soda though, if I was gonna survive the day at sea without getting the coast guard called out to rescue me. 

That wasn't hard at all. As soon as we got our boarding tickets, we found a convenience store right next to the harbor our boat was docked at, which had everything I could ask for and then some. Breakfast for the day consisted of Mountain Dew, beef jerky, and gummy bears. I also bought two large bags of pretzels, several more beef jerky, and plenty of fluids to get me through the rest of the day. Our boat departed from the harbor at 7:30 in the morning, and wouldn't return until 12:30 in the afternoon. 

The boat was called the "Super Queen" and was part of a decent fleet of boats, though the Super Queen was the largest boat out of the fleet. The Super Queen had two decks. The bottom deck had a large, air-conditioned cabin in the center of the boat, and the rest of the deck was uncovered. The upper deck had a much smaller cabin for the boat's driver, but was otherwise wide open and exposed.

The Skipper, a guy called Larry, was a huge dude, standing at over 7 feet tall and had biceps bigger than my thighs. Even though he was definitely intimidating, he was one of the kindest guys I've ever met. His deckhands, Mike and Tim, were much less intimidating. In fact, they were rather scrawny and didn't stand taller than 6 feet. I never met the driver of the boat. While Larry was the skipper, he hired someone else to drive the boat for him, so he could help out his guests on the deck. 

There were about 30 other people who joined us on the boat to fish, but the boat was so large that it didn't feel crowded. While most people chose to fish off the side and back of the boat, me, Sean, and Christian decided to fish off the bow. Not only would we be completely exposed to the wind so we wouldn't get too hot, but chances were, there would be more fish there since they may be startled by the boat's shadow everywhere else. 

We set our bags of food down inside the boat's bottom deck cabin, and Larry gave a quick orientation to make sure everyone knew what to expect. He told us that if we got sea-sick, we could come inside the air-conditioned cabin for treatment. However, if anyone had to puke, they needed to puke over the side of the boat, preferably over the bow, so more fish would be attracted to the boat (bad joke, still funny though). Then, Larry showed us how to use his fishing reels which were designed to handle fish up to 250 pounds. However, chances were, we'd be catching fish no bigger than 30 pounds that day, so we shouldn't need to worry about being pulled overboard. Finally, we learned that we'd be fishing about 25 miles off-shore. It would take us less than an hour to get to the fishing reefs, and less than an hour to get back to shore, which meant we had a little more than 3 hours of fishing time. There were well over a thousand different kinds of edible fish to catch from those reefs, ranging from barracudas to common grunts. 

Christian and Sean joined me at the bow of the boat as it gently coasted through the Clearwater harbor. I flipped my hat on backwards, and told Christian to do the same, but he shrugged and said we weren't going very fast. Obviously, we weren't going very fast then, but we definitely wouldn't make it 25 miles off the shore in 45 minutes going the speed we were going through the harbor. As soon as we drifted into the open ocean, the boat driver gunned it, and Christian lost his hat. I laughed at him as he chased it down the deck, and he pretended he didn't hear me when I yelled after him, "See, I told ya so!"

The seas were very choppy further out. I kept my knees bent as we bounded over the waves to keep myself from falling over. Occasionally, sea water would spray up into my face, though it was never enough to get me wet. Every now and then, flying fish would jump out of the water just ahead of the boat, and glide for almost 100 feet before diving back into the water. Christian was absolutely shocked by this! He thought flying fish were just a myth. He never once believed they actually existed, until they started gliding ahead of and alongside our boat. 

Aside from flying fish, there wasn't actually a lot of sea life to be seen on the surface. There were plenty of clumps of seaweed and kelp, though I couldn't see anything living around them, even through my polarized sunglasses. For the most part, the only living things around us were other people, flying fish, and the occasional sea bird. Everything else was deep underwater, hiding away from the heat of the Florida sun. 

Halfway to our destination, I turned to look towards Florida and saw nothing but ocean below and sky above. We were too far away from Florida to see the western coast over the curvature of the earth. In fact, we were too far away to see the other boats that were skipping along the waters by the coast. We were completely alone, charging over a choppy, navy blue ocean under a cloudless pale blue sky. It was actually kind of eerie. At the same time, I was excited that we'd be fishing away from the rest of the world. We wouldn't have to worry about getting our lines tangled with anyone else's, or someone chasing away the fish, or anything like that. It seemed like we had the whole ocean to ourselves, and I loved it! If only I had the whole prairie to myself while hunting last year.

Finally, after what felt like forever, the boat began slowing down. A few short minutes later, the engines cut, and we were allowed to bait and drop our hooks into the water. We were told to let our hooks drop until our lines stopped reeling out. Most of the fish were at the very bottom of the ocean where the reef was, which was almost 200 feet below the surface! I had about 500 feet of fishing line in the reel that could withstand over 250 pounds of force. I'd either get pulled overboard or lose my fishing pole long before the line would break, so I better be ready for anything and hope Larry was around to save my ass if I needed. Since no anchors would be dropped, our boat would drift along with the wind and the current, allowing us to move along with the fish rather than staying in one place. 

For the first 20 or 30 minutes, nothing seemed interested in anyone's lines. In fact, the only thing I was successful in catching during that time was a rock. That rock almost ruined my day. Thank God Larry was around to cut my line before I lost my fishing pole! I was really starting to panic for a minute, especially when my feet started slipping on the metal deck as the boat drifted away from the rock, but my line refused to budge. I put a new hook and piece of bait on my line, and dropped it in again. This time, I moved it around more to prevent it from snagging on a rock. This also enticed more fish to take my bait, and it wasn't long before my fishing pole bent down towards the ocean. 

Whatever took the bait was a decent-sized fish, although it didn't put up much of a fight. In fact, I stopped reeling in a few times just to see if I could still feel some actual weight on the end of my line. I brought in a decent-sized Sheepshead Porgy. Sheepshead Porgy can come in a variety of different colors and sizes, but they almost always have a mainly silver body and are usually no bigger than 10 pounds. The stripes along their body can come in almost every color of the rainbow. Mine had beautiful blue stripes running down its body that changed shades based on the lighting that hit it. 

Larry took my fish off of me and put it in a cooler tagged with my group's number. About the same time, Sean caught something, though I didn't have a chance to see what it was. I was too busy baiting and dropping my hook back in. 

I did a pretty lousy job of baiting my hook that time. I felt a very strong tug on my hook almost as soon as it reached the bottom, and that was that. I reeled in my line to find my hook empty. So, the next time I baited it, I made sure to secure the bait on the hook so the fish would have to work for it. 

The next fish that bit my hook was a very big and aggressive fish. I successfully reeled it up to the surface, but I only caught a glimpse of its long, silver body before it broke free and dove back into the water. 

"Goddamn it!" I shouted, "It got away!" 

"Just like your hopes and dreams." Christian smirked.

"The hell you just say?" I growled while I baited my hook again. 

"Uh. Nothing." Christian lied. 

"That's what I thought." I snarled. 

I dropped my baited hook into the ocean once again, and within minutes of it reaching the bottom, I felt something tug on it. This time, I wasn't messing around. I gave the hook one hard tug towards the surface, and the game was on! Whatever was on my line was a fighter! However, the closer it got to the surface, the less it fought. 

Christian peered over the bow of the boat as I pulled in my fish, and he shouted for the whole boat to hear, "She's caught a pufferfish! And it's big!" 

"A pufferfish," I thought, "Are those things even edible? I better check Google once I have this thing in the cooler."

I got the deflated pufferfish onto the deck just as Larry came up to us. 

"Oh, that's a nice puffer!" Larry smiled as he cut it off the line, "They call these things Chicken of the Sea, because when you cook them, they look like a drumstick and taste like a fishy chicken. They're my personal favorite!" 

"Oh, so they are edible? That's exciting!" I said. 

"They are delicious!" Larry shouted, "By the way, you wanna see something cool?"

Before I had a chance to respond, Larry put his mouth to the side of the pufferfish, just ahead of its pectoral fin, and blew the thing up like a balloon! I instantly burst out laughing harder than I have in a long time! Out of all of the things I thought I'd witness, seeing a man blow up a pufferfish like a balloon never once came to mind. Larry then handed me my inflated pufferfish, and used Christian's phone to take some pictures. He even encouraged me to toss the fish back and fourth with Christian like a baseball, but Christian backed out of it. I figured it was time to stop torturing the poor pufferfish, and handed it to Larry so he could deflate it and put it in our cooler. 

I stopped fishing for a bit to make sure pufferfish, more specifically, my pufferfish was edible. It was, but only its tail. The rest of the pufferfish is extremely poisonous, and if you eat anything except for the tail (which must be properly cooked), you can suffer from severe, long-lasting diarrhea, severe bouts of puking, temporary partial or total paralysis (including of internal organs, so chances are, you'd suffocate to death), internal bleeding, numbness, cold shivers, cold sweats, and many other horrible things that could easily kill a person, all the while being completely conscious of your experience. Basically, eating the wrong pufferfish would give you a lethal case of ALS in 3-6 hours. Out of the thousands of people who eat pufferfish every year, about 50 of them die from it. But being the adventurous eater I am, I decided to throw caution to the wind, and eat that fish anyway. If I died, at least I went out in style!

Christian and Sean both thought I was insane for wanting to eat such a dangerous delicacy, and even tried to convince me to feed the thing to the seagulls instead, but were otherwise impressed by my bravery. If I ate that fish and lived, I'd be a legend. If I died, I'd still be a legend, but for other reasons.

While I impaled a new piece of bait on my hook, Christian finally caught something and started acting as if it was his biggest bite yet. Contrary to Christian's ecstatic behavior, the fish he caught was a very small White Grunt. Like the thing barely weighed a pound, and it didn't have enough fight left in it to flop around on the deck. Sean laughed at Christian for making a big deal over such a small fish, and affectionately nicknamed Christian "Bitch-Fish" for his puny catch. 

Even though it was barely big enough to make a street taco out of, Larry put Bitch-Fish's fish in our cooler anyway, saying the meat added up. 

Unfortunately, after that little white grunt was caught, nothing else seemed to be biting. We either drifted away from the reef, caught every fish in the reef, or the fish realized that they'd be turned into a sandwich if they took the bait. Whatever happened, the fish stopped biting. So, Larry announced that we'd be moving to a new location just a few miles north, and hopefully we'd catch something there. Everyone reeled in their lines, and I took some time to get some food and water into my system while the boat headed over to that new reef. 

The new reef was basically a ghost town. I didn't feel a single bite, and the one fish that took Christian's bait was another small White Grunt. For an hour, we drifted over this large reef without a single bite. I'm not sure if anyone else was having any luck, but since everyone else was towards the back of the boat, and I never once saw Larry come up to the bow where I was, I figured people must be catching something. Turns out, they were! Someone even successfully pulled in a 30 pound barracuda, which was likely the same kind and size of fish I caught but lost just as it reached the surface. 

Larry finally announced that it was getting close to 11:45, and we needed to get our asses back to the coast. Because we were late, he'd push the boat to her limits, so we needed to be extra conscious about securing our fishing reels to the boat so they wouldn't become a hazard. Apparently, 10 people also got sea-sick, so for their sake, we needed to get to the harbor as soon as possible so they could get the help they needed. 

I decided to stay inside the cabin, because the boat would be moving at almost 40 miles per hour directly against a 10-25 mile per hour wind. I knew my skinny ass couldn't stand up to that. Christian and Sean joined me, and we snacked on some food and drinks while the boat bounded over the waves. Unfortunately, I started feeling a little woozy, and then downright sick. 

I ran onto the deck just in time to empty out my stomach into the sea below. I felt instantly better and color flushed back into my face, but I decided to stay outside so I wouldn't get sick again. Unfortunately for me, my illness didn't go unnoticed, but I wasn't the only one who was sick either. 

I heard the most impressive burp ever right next to me, and turned around just in time to see Christian volcano puke over the side of the boat as well. Once he was done, he stood back up, gave me a thumbs up and said, smiling, "All good!"

"Let's pretend this never happened!" I shouted over the wind. 

"Agreed!" Christian nodded. 

"Are you two feeding the fish?" I heard a booming voice behind us, "You should've done that as we were fishing."

It was Larry, and he was laughing at us. He'd seen it all from where he was standing at the bow of the boat. I was mortified, and so was Christian. 

"Uh, we're done now." I nervously giggled. 

Larry laughed some more, and I wasted no time following Christian up to the second deck of the boat where nobody else was. 

Up there, the wind howled past my ears. I met Christian above the bow of the boat, and I could tell he was still feeling sick. He held his face in his hands and was groaning. If I hadn't been seasick just minutes ago, I would've taken a few jabs at Christian. Instead, I just moved to the other side of the top deck cabin and enjoyed the fresh air. 

The Florida coast was just barely visible on the horizon, but it was approaching fast. Above me, several seagulls glided near the boat's mast, but other than that, there was no other life visible. Even the flying fish had made their way deeper into the water to avoid the heat, which if it weren't for the steady cool wind, I would've definitely felt. 

For the most part, I just let my mind wander as I stood above the bow leaning against the wind. I don't remember what I was thinking about, but time seemed to just fly by. Before I knew it, I could feel the boat slowing down as it approached the harbor. By then, at noon, the harbor was full of boats, and every beach along the coast was full of people. Our driver had to be extra careful driving our boat through the harbor since it was so crowded. Our boat was huge, and dwarfed all of the other boats on the water, which really put things into perspective. Perhaps the fishing boat I was on was more of a ship than a boat. 

I watched Larry, Mike, and Tim rush to the bow of the boat to start uncoiling the tether rope. They had to be ready to throw it to the deckhands on the dock, so the boat could be secured before the current and tide could pull it back to sea. Securing such a huge boat was no easy task, and the rope to secure it had to have been at least 300 feet long and over half a foot wide. 

Once the boat was docked, everyone was instructed to gather their things and get off the boat. The people who caught fish and wanted to take their catch home could wait for Larry to clean the fish for them, or they could otherwise give their fish to someone else who would eat them. A surprising number of people passed on eating their own fish. I'm pretty sure a decent handful of people walked off the fishing boat vegan that day. Oh well, more for me! I not only got the fish from my group's cooler, but I also got fish from two other groups who decided they just couldn't fathom the idea of eating the fish they caught themselves. 

While Larry was cleaning everyone's fish, five pelicans and one white heron came flying in and surrounded the cleaning table like dogs begging for food. While the pelicans had no problem eating the heads, skins, guts, and fins of the fish, the white heron had a better idea. If Larry wasn't paying attention, that bird would sneak in and steal a cleaned fillet. 

When my fish got cleaned, I stood nearby to keep the white heron from stealing my food. He was not afraid of me at all. I actually had to hold him back with one hand, and even then, he tried to reach his neck over my arm to get to the fillets, so I held him back further. Meanwhile, a pelican ducked between my legs to get a piece of fish that had fallen in front of me, and decided he liked his spot. I stood with my legs far apart so this pelican could comfortably stand there, but he didn't mind being touched or moved around. He was just as tame as my dog, and even asked me for pets by pressing his head against my hand. I guess you really can turn anything into an affectionate pet if you feed it enough. Don't quote me on that. 

I handed Larry a pretty hefty tip for all he did for us that day, and then headed off towards a nearby restaurant that would prepare my fish for me. I didn't trust my cooking skills enough to properly prepare my pufferfish. The risks were too great. Because my pufferfish was mixed in with the other fish, Christian refused to try any of it, and even Sean seemed a little apprehensive. I knew that would change once everything was prepared by the professional chefs at the popular restaurant we were going to. 

We met the rest of our crew at the restaurant. Priscilla and Layla covered their eyes and squealed when I tried showing them pictures of my catch when it still looked like a fish. Like my mom, Priscilla and her daughter are perfectly ok with eating meat just as long as they don't have to see it as an animal. I'll never even begin to understand that kind of mindset, which is very common these days. If I made the rules, I'd make every meat eater kill their own food at least once in their lives before they could have another burger. I think people would have a much deeper respect for our food if they actually had to look into its eyes before eating it. But, to each their own, I guess. Just don't call me a murderer for hunting and fishing if you eat or use any animal products. 

While everyone ordered very typical dishes, from hot wings to sandwiches, I ordered a dozen raw oysters to come with my grilled fish. I love raw oysters. They're one of my favorite foods, even though everyone else in my family (except for maybe uncle Courtney) thinks I'm nuts for enjoying them as much as I do. But, I couldn't care less about what people think of me. Let me eat what I like and I'll do the same. 

To his credit, Christian did try one of my raw oysters. However, as soon as he swallowed it, his face paled and he sprinted for the bathroom. He came back a few minutes later, looking much better and trying to act like nothing happened. I guess he just couldn't handle it. At least he tried. 

When my fish came back, they were grilled and drenched in lemon juice. Since they looked a lot more like food, Sean, Christian, and my mom wasted no time taking a pile of fish for themselves. The pufferfish was pretty easily distinguishable from everything else. The chef left the tail intact, and it really did look like a chicken drumstick! Everything else just looked like regular white fish fillets, and actually tasted like grilled tilapia with a little more of a salty flavor to it. The pufferfish did taste a little like chicken, but tasted more like a fish for the most part. In all, my meal was delicious, and I ate the remaining three pounds of fish, as well as my little pufferfish, in under 15 minutes. Better yet, I never once suffered any of the debilitating consequences of eating a poorly-prepared pufferfish.