The smell of the fresh sea air. The sound of waves lapping and seagulls calling. The feel of the ocean's mist on your skin. The taste of fish caught no more than a few hours ago.The primal fear of what is swimming in the water below... All rather hard things to experience when you live in Arizona.
Luckily last month I got the chance to have all of those sensations hit my senses! You see my best friend was getting married. He and his (now) wife live out in Houston. He not only honored me with the role of best-man, but also ceremony officiant! This left several rather "large items" to prepare for. One such being, the bachelor party.
So to give a little more background, he and I have been best friends since first grade! He and his family were the ones to take me on my first fishing trip, instilling a life-long passion of mine. So it only made sense that part of the bachelor party would be to do a little fishin'!
I decided for the party we would head down to Galveston, rent a house and get hooked up (fishing pun) with a charter service. I found the Galveston Fishing Charter Company and began the process of getting everything in order. We had some logistics to figure out, with how many guys were going to be fishing but Capt. Jeff helped work everything out perfectly before hand. We had to take two boats because of the size of our party. The groomsmen and I ended up with Capt. Zack, who should be requested for if you go! He was awesome! Always ready to help, extremely knowledgable, good choice of tunes and just made the whole trip memorable. (Oh, congrats again on the inbound baby, Zack!)
Anyway, where we were fishing there were several species to target. While we caught a couple red-drum the main catch were sheepshead. These are extremely interesting fish who mostly eat crustaceans. Because of this they have almost human like teeth and an assortment of other things to poke, stick, prick or cut you.
The guides prepared and packaged all of the fish from the boats, (no small task as I think we had 35 sheepshead and two reds) which is part of their standard service. Seriously, check them out!
Now when it comes to seafood, I believe in simplicity. So many times I will see recipes calling out for several ingredients that aren't going to be used for anything else you would normally cook, or there are excessive "preparation processes".
All we did with the reds and a few sheepshead was drizzle a little bit of olive oil on them and then Rubb'd them up! I had brought both Sedona Smoke and Donovan's Beef with me.
The actual cooking was even easier, just a charcoal grill. We made sure the fish was cooked all the way through and it was time to enjoy!
This stuff was delicious! Having caught the fish earlier that day did not hurt that fact by any means, but remember to simplify seafood. It's no joke when I tell you not to beat your meat! (OK, well yes. Yes it is.)
Until next time!
-Chubbs
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