I used rectangle select to select and copy a part of your picture below the text, then used fuzzy select on the white letters, pasted the copy into the selection
I really like your picture

I had to try this one too cuz I have never used this method before.

Ha! Awesome. Thanks for all of the help guys!! I think I got it now.

One last thing - Have any good free image/material sites? I'm looking for a HUGE scary looking fish

and if all else fails....
try it in wordart and then paste and copy into the image. I often do that and it works great. wordart has given you a headstart and GIMP no longer sees it as fonts but as an image so you can make the alterations you want more easily.

When you mentioned huge scarry fish I immediately thought of the "Black Gulper" found at extreme ocean depths. You might try a Google search for that or just type in a long tail search string like "huge scarry fish images" and you'll find quite a few there.