Deep Sea Fishing

Last Saturday, Matt and I went deep sea fishing off the coast near Dana Point, Long Beach and Catalina Island, CA.  I have always wanted to learn how to fish, and when I met Matt about 8.5 years ago, he said that he would teach me one day. Well, at least he can FINALLY say that he has taught me how to fish, Haha! Better late than never, right? And we also were able to cross it off our baby list!
Well, leading up to us going deep sea fishing, I had thought in my mind the entire time that the waves would be really rocky, there would be water coming overboard, fish everywhere, reeling in super big fish (maybe even shark!)  and less crowded… something like this

On Saturday morning, we woke up at 4 A.M., ate some breakfast, then headed out on the road. The place we went through, Davey's Locker, was about an hour drives away up north at Newport Beach.

When we got there, we received all of our gear that we would need for the entire 10-hour experience. 

We loaded up on the boat  (this is when my vision of what I thought was going to happen slowly started to go away) with about 91 other people. Matt started to put the line on our fishing rod and gave me a quick lesson.

 Hooking on bait

 My turn to hook on bait (squid)

While we were fishing, we saw TONS and TONS of dolphins swimming in packs. It was so cool. Some of them would jump so high out of the water and swim up close to the boat. We even saw whales , sea lion, and a shark (which I didn't get to my camera fast enough since I had squid hands!) 

 Matt catching a fish.

 My first fish that I have ever caught in my life. I was pretty excited since all day I wasn't catching anything but others around me were.  Some people were even catching HUGE fish and one even caught a shark.

All in all, we had a great time. It got a bit colder once the sun set and at that point, I was just ready to get off the boat and go home since we still had an hour drive back and I had work the next morning at 4am.  So, it was supposed to be a 10 hour experience, but it ended up being 12 hours because it took a bit longer to cut everyone's fish that they caught. Matt and I decided not to keep our fish (we only caught 3 Lol).