Well this past weekend was a wild one on the island. On Saturday, we took the boat towards the west end of the Island to a place called the Katrina Cut. It is named this because when hurricane Katrina came through it literally cut the island in half, and it had to be repaired with a wall of rocks. We pulled the boat up to a point of the beach, and had the place all to ourselves. I was fishing, Tami was sitting in the sun, and Lincoln had his life jacket on jumping in the water. At one point we heard a roaring sound behind us and when we turned, there was a school of fish about 40 yards wide jumping out of the water and coming towards us. Clearly something was under them, and they were swimming for their lives. Moments later about 50 yards off-shore there were several large splashes – obviously a large fish was terrorizing smaller fish. Something just felt weird about the water. Even as I was wading out into the water to fish, there was an awkward sense that there may be sharks in the water and that is why all the commotion had occurred. We were certainly worried about Lincoln in the water and eventually forbid him from going in the water past his paws. We ended up leaving to go home around 1 pm. We hesitated to tell too many people about the activity we saw because it sounded like an exaggeration when I said it. The next day Tami was reading the news and saw where someone had been attacked by a shark at Dauphin Island. I told Tami that it didn’t surprise me considering what we saw. Then as she kept reading we realized that the shark attack happened right where we were, almost at the time we left. The article spoke about a man on a jet ski that had been attacked while fishing, and we totally remember the guy on the jet ski from that day. I guess we all have instincts for a reason, and we should use them. Our instincts were telling us that there was danger in the water, and there certainly was. Wild story to tell from our adventures on Dauphin Island.
Eric Johnson