SUPER-BOAT RACES!!

by Robin

I can't believe I totally left you all hanging after going to the Super-Boat races on the 22nd. I took a couple hundred photos and haven't shared a single one. There's no better way to efficiently get so many photos up here at once, than through a slideshow.

OUR CATCH from LAST MONTH
by Robin


I keep meaning to post up these pictures of my tarpon pictures from tarpon fishing the other day.



Oh wait.... that's not a tarpon, it's a bonnethead shark.



Oh right.... we only caught 1 shark that morning. BUT, I did see 2 tarpon jump on their own not far from me. One tarpon even was chasing a fish into the air. It was spectacular.

WHO's RIGHT and WHO's WRONG
by Robin

A couple weeks ago, Jack and I were peacefully fishing for tarpon off the Cape Canaveral shores. We bought some blue crabs before dawn. Enjoyed light sprinkles as the sun rose and gave way to beautiful sky.



We did not see big schools of tarpon stacked up, so we decided to bring the fish to us. We anchored up 200-300 yds off the beach, freelining some crabs under a bobber for bait. I had a shark playing on the end of my line but he couldn't seem to get that big crab down his gullet.

About that time, we see a team of life guard trainees jogging out of the dunes and running north of the beach. Whew, for a minute, I thought they were going to swim out to us. I'm distracted by the bobber and eventually look for the trainees again, only to find them swimming out as far as our boat is anchored out.

I hear the captain say, "Swim around the boat and go back in."

That's when I snapped this picture.


You can clearly see we're in blue water, out past the last set of breakers, water is calm..... it's a beautiful morning except we now have over a dozen people swimming over to us.

I did not take more picture for fear of upsetting folks, but I wish I had now. The captain of the team stops swimming boatside, removes his goggles and asks me how I'm doing. Hmmm?? How am I doing? I'm fine. I'm in a boat. The question really should have been, "What in the world are you doing swimming out here with sharks? "

He then proceeds to shock me by telling me we were in violation of anchoring closer than 400 yds to the beach. I laughed and told him he was joking. He quite seriously insisted that was the law and if Coast Guard caught us, they could fine us.

Stop the record here....... this is where my mind flashbacked to 2 NOAA-NMFS officers coming to my door to investigate us for being too close to a N. Right Whale. The last thing we want to do is break any more laws out on the water.

Back to story: Well, the team of swimmers proceeded to swim over, under and through my line. One even hit the bobber and another probably came close to snagging the hooked crab. I yelled, "Watch out for the line!" Honestly, it was bad enough to have Capt Mark come out and reprimand me, but then to also mess with my freeline, it was downright insulting. That Captain intentionally came over to show his muscle and interfere with our fishing.

Being the angry Italian woman I can be, (it's rare, but happens when idiots pursue me) I decided to verify the law or regulation. I took it up with a fishing forum with a section for asking the law questions.

I had multiple humorous replies, but one struck me interesting. Florida hunters have harassment laws on the books since 1990. Here is the gist of it:

28 FLA Stat. ch. 372.705
(a) Interfere with or attempt to prevent the lawful taking of fish, game or nongame animals by another.
(b) Attemp to disturb fish, game or nongame animals or attempt to affect their behavior with the intent to prevent their lawful taking by another.

Another person emailed FWC and their response (can't cut/paste onto blogspot any more) was "unless there are designated swimming or restricted vessel areas, there are no state laws that restrict distance. Some counties have ordinances that apply but that is on a county by county basis."

Another asked 2 lifeguards in Duval Co (Jacksonville) who both agreed it was 100 yds offshore.

I guess my next step would be to ask the specifics for Brevard Co FWC. But the originally discussed 400 yds does seem awfully far away from a beach. That's 1200 ft or a couple tenths of a mile. That's considerably far off the beach and I see that violation ALL THE TIME. Those are good fishing grounds for many species. Coast guard patrols around here frequently and I've never heard of people ticketed for anchoring off the jetty rocks which are less than a 100 feet from Jetty park beach, much less further down the coast.

So, the pursuit of the truth continues.

Who is right and who is wrong?

Comment with your thoughts on the issue.

Happy Fishing,
Robin

SUPER BOAT GRAND PRIX
by Robin


They are going to be at our port next weekend. This isn't something that I'm exactly drawn to, but Jack's coworkers are going to take their boats and anchor up together to watch the races. Sunday is our only day to do this, so I guess I know how I'm spending my afternoon already. ha ha.

www.superboat.com

TARPON FISHING - 7/27/10
by Robin

Up at 4:30am, in the car at 5:30 am, leaving the docks at 6:20 with sprinkles of rain on our heads. Jack had to use his boat lights, which seemed so nice.

We cleared the mouth of the port just in time to watch the sun rise over the horizon. Unfortunately, a big rain cloud blocked our view. Well, I say unfortunately, but it turned out to be a good thing because the rain stopped quickly and left us with cool air.



To our west, the moon was still hanging in the sky. It hadn't return to it's slumber yet.


We searched the "Bight", north of the port for a mile or so and saw no bait or big fish. We did a 180 and headed south.



Southeast, there was more rain with some lightening. Oh, it was gorgeous. Dark rain at the bottom with a burst of morning light at the top.

A few minutes later, I saw a beautiful mirror of sky and sea behind me. So, I snapped this picture. Again, rain below and glory above!


An hour later, the sun was still stuck behind the clouds but the rain was far, far off in the distance. I swore I could see one cloud cast a shadow on another cloud. I could have reached out and touched the finger of God with landscape views like this!!


I've got to run, but tomorrow, I'll post up the fishing part of our morning.
God bless America and YOU!
Happy Fishing,
Robin

TARPON fishing!
by Robin

It looks like we may get our first opportunity to go Tarpon fishing Tuesday. I'm very excited. You don't keep Tarpon, but they are an exciting gamefish. They're the aerobatic giants of the shallows or inshore water.

A few years back, we happened upon a school of tarpon but didn't know a thing about catching them. It was quite a site to see large fish rolling & boiling up the waters around you. Every since that day, it has been one of those fish I'd like to check off my to-do list.

There is a good chance of catching sharks as well. I've heard they're plentiful in the same waters we're heading to. They're probably feeding off the same bait.

Anyhow, Tomorrow has a west wind, 5 knots, seas 1-2 ft with a dominant period of 10 seconds. This should make some awesome tarpon fishing waters!

(Images provided by Google search engine.)

As you can see from the image on the right, lady anglers can also enjoy the sport from this giants. Fly-fishermen find them to be great action on their fly rods as well. I'm guessing the fish on the right is well over 100 lbs.

Happy Fishing!!

WHALE WATCHER GET A CRASH VISIT!!
by Robin

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100722/od_yblog_upshot/whale-watchers-recount-bizarre-yacht-jump

From The Today Show:





I can totally sympathize with this story. (Forgive the awful quality scan)



We had been observing a whale, drifted too close (illegally close - don't do this!!) and then she came over to see us and gave me a harrowing minute, myself. There's nothing you can do but hope the whale doesn't spook and it goes away without causing damage to you, them or the boat.

Legal Disclaimer: The whale in the National story is a S. Right whale. The whale in our story is a N. Right whale, which is a protected, endangered species. The law states that you must stay 500 yds AWAY from them. If not, you can expect a visit from NOAA-NMFS like we did. Penalty for this ranges from $20K - $50K.

God bless!
Robin

JOB's SURE KNOWLEDGE

Sept 10, 1876

by Charles Spurgeon

I've been studying the Book of Job this past month and I'm in Chapter 19 when I came across this very old sermon by the great Charles Spurgeon. What a great analogy to go on this Christian fisherman's blog.

"There may be some rough water to be crossed between here and the fair havens of eternal felicity, but all is right there for ever and ever.

There may be losses and crosses, there may be tossings and shipwrecks, but all is right for ever with all who are in Christ Jesus. "Some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship,"—but all who are in Christ Jesus shall escape "safe to land."

There are uncertainties innumerable, but there is this one certainty: "Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end." Spring on this rock, man!

If you are struggling in the sea, just now, and waves of sin and doubt beat over you, leap on to this rock, Jesus lives.

FULL SERMON HERE

John 7:38

He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”






(Our new pool toy)

KINGFISH DIP!!!
by Robin

It's that time of year again! If you're looking for great recipes, feel free to try the links at the bottom right corner of my page. Our recipe is similar, but different. It's secret because it's so good, we may just have to market this.

First off, we were blessed to get all this kingfish meat from a friend. As you can tell from the regular size scissors, it was one huge king. I'm guessing there is 25 lbs of meat in the below picture.



Set aside an entire day to slow-smoke your fish. One day, we hope to have a big daddy-type smoker, but for now, this one works. Our biggest downfall was that we had to do the process multiple times to get all the fish smoked. By bedtime, all the fish was done, bagged & cooling down in the frig for day 2.



Look how it puffed up! That's Mesquite smoke. Heat about 150-225 deg.


When it looks this great, take it off.


Here's Chef Jack (not a trained chef, but one at heart) with the tray of meat that we deboned together.


Not only is this a lot of meat (2 bowls worth), but LOOK at those ribs. Do you see those 4 spikes in the lower, center part of the picture? I can truly imagine that a long-time ago, Indians used these for something.


Here are some.... most (?) of the ingredients. Some things we didn't use. The spices & secret ingredients are not shown. We bought in mass quantities which made the grocery store folks laugh.


Skipping a few steps, but you can see the master at work.


White meat is gently folded into the mix.


We filled 17 small containers with dip.


Jack took bunches to work and the report is that it was inhaled before noon. He also took boxes of crackers with him.

This morning, I realized that we never smoked the 1 smaller pkg of meat, so we will be repeating all of this again soon.

Actually, we enjoy doing all this work. We love cooking together. The work goes by much quicker when we have each other's company. It is a big reward to gift people too.

Happy Fishing!
Robin

7/10/10 - S. PELICAN FLATS
by Robin

I'll keep this short & sweet since it being done through lunch. Jack took Saturday off from work because the weather was so beautiful. We were up at 5am, down to the port by 7am after filling up gas for a long while. I had forgotten how long the ramp lines were on the weekends, plus one ramp was damaged so nobody was using it.

We borrowed a friend's ledge - coordinates and anchored up perfect the 3rd try. Stayed out there 'til 1:50pm when we decided to pack it up because the heat was unbearable. We did use a chum bag for the first time. The jury is still out on how useful it was. We did ok fish-wise, but we also had 1 large shark at first, a good dozen remoras consistently off the back of the boat and 1 cobia that we couldn't catch because the remoras were eating bait before we could feed it to him. Our eldest hooked him up for a short while but he never did get the hook sunk perfectly. So sad.

Nice cooler shot.




Below is an image I grabbed off the internet. I caught a red porgy that was shy of the size limit so we threw it back. It was a first for us. I took pictures of our day but lost them all in a camera formatting issue (about to kill my camera). The only picture saved from that day was the cooler shot that I sent my mom & sister. Too bad.



Nice, smooth ride in. Saw a school of dozens of brown sting rays. Loaded up the boat easily considering the wind that was picking up.

6/29/10 - SURF FISHING at PLAYALINDA Beach
by Robin

I forced the boys out of bed at 7 am and out the door by 7:30. We took my grandfather's surf pole with us, along with various beach toys.

We arrived at the beach only to find very heavy haze, practically fog. Eeerie but absolutely cool. It was coming up on high tide with supposed 1-2 ft waves (more like a solid 2 ft+) and 87 deg temps, which felt more like 70 degs. The thermocline is hitting offshore and I believe it was showing itself on the Canaveral Nat'l Seashore this morning.



We made our way through the turtle nesting areas to a place where the boys could run around. Our church's playgroup was going to be joining us at 10:30am.



Here was my view, looking northbound.


I fished for hours with nary a bite. I used clams, fake crab, frozen & live sandfleas, frozen shrimp,... you name it. I got NOTHING.

But the boys...... they found a nice size crab to catch & observe.




After the friends all started to show up, I put up the pole until after many of them left again. The boys borrowed some boogie boards to ride in the surf.


This is NOT a beach to simply relax and not watch your kids. It is steep at high tide, so we waited until it was almost level at low tide before doing this.



We buried our friends, one by one.





By 3pm, we were one of the last 2 families there. Time to go home & cook dinner & get baths.

Look how the water color & clarity changed by afternoon!!!! Gorgeous day.





The view South at the top of the Barrier Ridge. Those are 2 of the launch pads for the shuttles.


Such an odd thing right in the middle of the Wildlife Refuge & beach.

Blog 2 down....... Hmmm.....

I think I'm going surf fishing on Friday again. Hopefully I'll catch a stinkin' fish this month. LOL

Happy Fishing!

6/14/10 - 8A Reef & HETZEL SHOALS
by Robin

Inspite the fact that nobody reads this and I'm totally uninspired by that, I'm still going to blog up our last 2 trips with poles in hand.

On June 14th, we headed offshore rather early, but not dawn. We brought the umbrella which only resulted in one poked face.



Caught bait on the 3rd buoy that we came upon. All buoys were holding barracuda which is normal for summer. You'd better get your bait in the boat fast before they come to eat it.





While running out to 8A, we ran past a bait pod that seemed a good acre in size. Hindsight was that we probably should have trolled the edges to see what was boiling them up to the surface. Probably would have caught some kingfish there, but didn't stick with it.

Found some nice rips & scattered weeds on 8A. Saw a couple small mahi mahi that didn't bite.



Spent a couple hours with only 1 knockdown, resulting in ZERO fish.

Motored to a new spot, called Hetzel Shoals. Supposedly it was holding cobia fish there. And it is STILL holding fat cobia there, but we didn't stick it out since it was new grounds. I know this looks like a picture of blue nothing, but we really could see slight formations on the bottom. According to other fishermen, you can see forms of large fish swimming around. That's when you drop the hook w/ bait down. Next time we go out, we'll probably head back and try it again. Dozens of fish are coming off of this area. One had a tag on it from Louisiana.



We went back to 8A and after some unsuccessful trolling, tried bottom fishing. We've never done that there before. A few black sea bass and a nice dolphin show was all we got.



The kids were so happy to hear we were headed back home by 2:30pm. Too much heat. No fish action. VBS that night. Sometimes you just need to cut your losses.



One down, one to go....

DEPRESSED
by Robin

Last week, the vote went through to close fishing in a specially boxed off area (98 ft - 240 ft water depth, from Port Canaveral to Savannah). No boat is allowed to verticle fish (bottom fishing) in thousands of square feet of ocean. Trolling is allowed. You can't even travel through the "boxed" area unless your bottom fishing poles are stowed away. Supposedly, the coast guard is watching you on radar and your boat will then be inspected upon entering the port to make sure you didn't catch any fish off the bottom. THIS IS RIDICULOUS!! The Carolinas were included in this box as well, but their representatives fought the SAFMC recommendations with a promise to not enforce any of their regulations and so their area was removed. Florida representatives sold us out.... for what??

This is not a hoax y'all. This is the passage of Amendments 17A & 17B from the South Atlantic Fisheries Mgmt Council.

People from my coast are now heading over to the Gulf of Mexico to catch what they can before the oil hits over there. Scallop season was opened 2 wks early so people could harvest before the oil hits beds. Eventually, there will be little to no fishing on the West Coast. Friends going to the Keys for Mini-Lobster season in early August have said the rooms are not booked and they're offering 50% discounts for divers that will book & come down.

Florida's fishing & diving economy is officially sunk.

What is the fate of this blog?? Our family's favorite hobby?? Florida lifestyle on a boat??

I'm not trying to be mean but since nobody has read my blog in weeks, I can let my hair down and speak my mind. If liberals take over this world, we'd be sitting in the middle of knee-high grass (no gas for your car or lawnmowers), with tons of mosquitos surrounding us, stinky because we shouldn't use bug sprays nor certain bars of soap, unable to afford power & AC for our homes because the prices would necessarily skyrocket, unable to fish because the ocean is closed off to us, unable to hunt because they're taken away our guns and unable to go to our beaches since they're covered in oil. I'll be sickly because my doctors will have quit their practices, meds will be unaffordable because I'm taxed up to my eyeballs & my insurance company will have dissolved and Jack may not have a job because all of those evil-capitalists will be run out of their businesses.

Where in the world have all our freedoms gone? Where in the world is the America I grew up with??? Sheesh people, I just want to be able to fish. Don't mess with my fishing. It does weird things to me.

Hey all!!

I really have fished recently. I just haven't posted up anything yet. Pictures coming soon!!

Tourney Results
by Robin

Tourny 1
Dolphin1. Rigatoni, 29.5, Matt Ring2. Dirty Hooker, 27.4, Jason Shimpnaugh3. Sea Hopper, 26.75, Harold Cook

Tourny 2
Dolphin1. Watusi, 31.90, Bradley McGuire2. In The Salt, 31.85, Eric Johnson3. Triple 7's, 23.70, Ralph Turner4. Slam Time, 26.50, Jeff Brown



Why do I bother mentioning this??? Top tourny weights of dolphin were 31.9 lbs and 29.5 lbs. Those are very low weights in a fish that can easily top 70 lbs. Jacksonville is having large mahi and south of us are seeing large mahi.

I believe this heavy freeze, late spring run and now intense heat have done something so weird to the migration patterns. Fish that stayed with normal migration times, continued in the Gulf Stream until the inshore waters warmed up enough for them to cross over. That means they bypassed us. Fish that were late in migration stayed south and eventually hung there in the deeper waters off those shores.

Anyhow, that is my guess to such weird tourny results. Btw, no wahoo were caught in either tournament. Also strange.

Happy Fishing,
Robin

SNAPPER/GROUPER DECISION
by Robin

All this week SAFMC is meeting to discuss certain closures on different species each day. Yesterday was the day for Snapper/Grouper talks. Talks went late and today, the news is that the decision was 9-4 vote to close Snapper & Grouper fishing. They were still hammering out exactly where fishing was closed off. They have a box, but the sides of the box keep changing. If you catch the fish outside the box, it is rumored that the Coast Guard (your tax dollars at work) are going to watch you on radar to make sure you don't stop in that boxed area while coming in to port.

This is so crazy. What if you catch snapper outside the box and then find a school of mahi and stop to get one of them?? What if spearfishing is allowed in this area but you still have a rod & reel on your boat? How do they enforce that? Will it end up looking a bit like our open borders? Will they get lax and eventually 12 million red snapper will enter the country illegally?

I have no answers to any of my questions. Infact, the more I try to get informed on the issue, the more questions I have.

Happy Fishing, if they let us.......