I'm pretty sure that, like a lot of captains, I look forward to trips where I'm taking a father and son for a day of time together, and (hopefully) catching some fish to take home to the family. There's something time honored to this particular kind of outing. Dustin booked the half-day trip via long-distance, between his work out of state and weekends at home. I told him the fishing was a little tough with the warm water, but if he could be flexible, we'd find something. He asked initially about mahi (dolphin), but I told him that they were currently a little too far offshore for a half-day excursion. The primary species for nearshore trips right now is Spanish and king mackerel. I mentioned that we'd also been catching some sharks, and he told me that his son would love to catch one of those! We started out working on the Spanish. It wasn't long out of the inlet before we hooked up our first fish, and several others followed. Once again, many of the fish were undersized, but at least they were plentiful. Eventually, we had four keeper fish aboard and multiple releases, and we had worked our way a few miles down the coastline. I asked the guys if they would like to switch it up and try slow-trolling for something bigger. Mason's eyes lit up as he asked, "can we catch a shark?" Fishing can be fickle so I hate to guarantee anything, especially to a youngster, but I told him we'd give it our best try. Thankfully, we hadn't had the baits in the water long before a hungry Atlantic sharpnose shark took one of the baits. The Atlantic sharpnose is a smaller shark, seldom growing much over 3' long, and they're plentiful in our area. They're also extremely good to eat, if you treat them properly after landing, and they can put up a decent fight for their size. This one was a shade over two feet long, but had managed to get one of the hooks in his pectoral fin. As a result, we had to fight him sideways, giving Mason almost more than the young man could handle. Dad had to step in at the end to help him out, but he got the fish aboard. I quickly bled it out over the side to protect the meat, and into the cooler it went. Mason got some high fives with his dad, and plopped down on the beanbag chair to recover from the battle. A little later, we picked up a very small blacktip shark. I called Mason to the rod, but he looked up from the beanbag and told me that it was OK, his dad could catch this one. After this, the slow trolling was not very productive, so they asked to go back and catch more Spanish. We worked back to the beach and started catching again. Six more keepers went into the box, and many more fish went back to grow a little larger. Dustin and Mason packed up at the end of the trip with a cooler of fish and already planning to make another trip.