I am fishing for tuna on a big boat out of San Diego in about one month.  We will live on the boat for ten days. There will be over 20 people living on the boat and fishing. My friend Scott Haven and I are driving down and rooming together in one of the state rooms. I have purchased three different fishing rods and reels for the trip. One of them will have 30-pound line on it, the second 50-pound line, and the third 80-pound line. We will use the rod that best fits the size of fish we are targeting. The reels are made for saltwater, so everything is made of aluminum or stainless steel. They are two-speed reels. On the high speed setting, one turn of the crank brings in four feet of line, and the low speed brings in only one foot per crank. The reels also have what is called a lever drag system. There is a lever on the side of the reel; the farther forward it is pushed, the higher the drag. The drag setting is the amount of pounds the fish will have to pull so that the line is pulled off the reel rather than going on. The drag system allows us to fight a hundred-pound fish on a 30-pound test line without breaking the line.  The bend in the rod and the stretch in the fishing line are also shock absorbers that help keep the fish from breaking the line. The recommended drag setting at its highest setting is 1/3 of the line rating. I had my grandson help me, and with a scale tied to the end of the fishing line, we set the drag on my three reels to the proper amount. The rod is bent over a long way when you get 25 pounds of pull on it. The reels are large capacity reels holding over 500 yards of line so the fish can run a long way. Five hundred yards is over a quarter of a mile. The hope is that the big fish will tire out pulling out all that line, and then I can reel him in. Usually, a fish goes on two or three long runs, each shorter than the previous one, until you get them up to the boat, and a deck hand gaffs them and pulls them up on the boat’s deck. 

I am also a fisher of men because of the assignment I have received from Jesus. As I talk with people trying to convince them to follow Jesus as their savior, I recognize that I can pull too hard and break them off, so they walk away and possibly never come to faith in Christ. I always pray and ask God for wisdom to say just enough, but not too much. Having a built-in drag system would be nice, but I have to rely on insight gained from experience and the wisdom from the Holy Spirit.