Robin's Reports

5/4/06 Rigged and Ready!!

Today is the first day of our summer break for the boys and myself. We finished with testing on Wednesday and it was great to sleep in this morning. Today was also big prep day for Jack and me as we look forward to tomorrow's day of trolling for mahi mahi. We have a friend fishing with us, Mr. John. We like Mr. John because he tolerates kids well and he is at the same place on the learning curve with us. He also 'chums' the water with seasickness, so he gets brownie points just for perseverance. Sometimes it is a relief to me to have another man on the boat who can do the physically demanding chores that I don't like. For example, Mr. John will pull up the anchor for me. I hate pulling up the anchor after the first time because it can get really, really heavy and leave my hands blood red and shoulders in pain [bursitis].

Jack came in from work and had a dozen ballyhoo and all the wire & hooks to boot. He spent over an hour rigging them up for tomorrow. Now, they are sitting in brine solution in the frig. I'm afraid I wasn't much help other than moral support. I did make sure homemade pizza was on time, which is a very important factor. I went to the grocery store and picked up all the fixin's for subs, chips, sodas, and a box of doughnuts for breakfast. It is our tradition to have doughnuts on fishing day. Usually I will try to abstain but it is a deal I worked out w/ my youngest in order to get him willing to wake up at the crack of dawn, get on a boat and spend all day drugged with Bonine. Now, he is gaining his sea legs, plus the seas will be minimal, so I think he won't need any motion sickness pills. I'm hoping that Mr. John will have a better day too.

We are looking at 5-10 knot winds, SW, 2 ft seas @ 9 sec wave intervals. Swell ht is 1.6 ft @ 10 sec. It will be mostly sunny, 91 deg, UV 100,000 . It should be a marvelous day for trolling. We have pink/wh, purple/wh skirts w/ ballyhoo, naked ones (no skirts) and some weighted w/ sinkers to swim them about 1 ft below the surface. Last time we were out, the plain (naked) ballyhoos were the ones that attacked. You just never know until you get out there. We are heading directly to Pelican Flats and then trolling out deeper. The Gulf Stream is currently 32 miles offshore, so we shouldn't be running into it this time either.

Now, if we could only get the gas prices to go back down and this wouldn't be such an expensive family hobby.