“Jesus . . . saw . . . Peter, and Andrew . . . casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And He saith unto them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Standing on the banks of a cool stream with a strong current or fishing from drift boats, sports fishermen hope to catch a few steelhead trout to take home for eating. But many of the fishermen get a thrill out of just catching these fighters and immediately release them back into the water.
Steelhead trout, a relative of the salmon, weigh from three to twenty pounds and are found mostly in oceanside streams from California to Alaska. Steelheads are actually rainbow trout but are called steelheads because they change to a steely-blue color during their migrations from fresh water to salt water.
Travel to the ocean is usually in the spring, and their return, after three years in salt water, is in the fall. In these migrations, some will travel two hundred miles or more in a river, but no one knows how far they travel in the ocean. As they work their way upstream, mates are selected and together they return to the same spawning area where they hatched. No one can understand how they pick the right stream after being gone so long, but it is a God-given instinct that works without fail.
However, since many rivers and streams now have dams that steelheads cannot get past, hatcheries are used to hatch great quantities of eggs taken from migrating females. The fingerlings are placed in suitable mountain streams in the spring soon after hatching.
Mature steelheads have smaller scales and shorter heads than salmon. They are beautiful fish, dark blue-gray along the back from the top of the mouth to and including the large upright tail. There is a light pink band just below the blue-gray on the body and on the lower fin. Between the lower fin and the pink band on the body is another olive colored band. The entire underside is plain white. This coloring pattern is almost identical to some salmon.
Others are silvery with tints of gray and pink. Some adults also have tan backs spotted with small brown circles atop the pink middle stripe. They will all give a fisherman a long, hard fight when hooked.
In the opening Bible verse, what do you think the Lord Jesus meant when He told those two fishermen that He would make them fishers of men? He was promising to use them to bring the gospel to many people to save them for heaven, by telling them of God’s love in sending Him to be the Saviour of sinners. And Peter and Andrew did that faithfully.
Are you a “fisher of men”? You are if you have told others about our blessed Saviour and His love for them.
ML-08/15/2004