10/20-29/06 What a month!!!

This is my 2nd attempt to blog tonight. The blog monster ate my first attempt. How appropriate for Halloween.

Our trip to Cedar Key, FL on 20th- 23rd.

Dh and I at SeaBreeze Restaurant. The bay view is in the background.

Jack and my Dad. Two wonderful men. Thanks Mom for taking this picture.




My boys.



The fishing from the wall across from our motel was excellent. I'm holding a nice spotted trout.




Jack with a nice Red Fish (Drum).

We were catching fish pretty regularly on 3/0 or smaller hooks, monofilament and dead, frozen shrimp.




I don't know how well you can see the fish, but it is also another red fish. It had 2 spots on the tail.

We also caught too many baby sailcats, grunts, Dad's eel, and ladyfish. The inlet you see behind me leads to the marine (to the right). It is very hard to get under the bridge at high tide and get out past the oyster shell beds during low tide. Yet, Cedar Key is known to be one of the last towns in Florida that one can still make a living off the ocean.



Here I am with my Mom in the hallway of Dockside Motel. I hate that her eyes were closed because it was a great hug and moment for me. It has been about 10 months since I had seen my parents and this was out last night. You know, one of those times when you don't want to say good-bye. About 2 hours after these photos were taken, the flood gates opened up and we'd have to go to bed and leave early in the a.m. I hate good-byes.



Here we are at our third and last dinner at SeaBreeze. We did not plan for all of us to be in pastels, primarily pink. Something about FL weather that makes you go pastel. ha ha.







Our trip to Ft. Walton Beach, FL on 23rd - 25th.



Here is Capt Jack's 2nd cousin's home in the Ft. Walton Beach area. That is the beautiful intracoastal waterway behind their home.

They have gorgeous sunrises to the left and sunsets to the right to see from their balconies. They also share in our enthusiasm for boats and fishing.

Did you see those front steps? Try carrying a couple suitcases up them.

Here is why we went to Ft. Walton Beach:

Grandma Mary is 96 years young!!! Her sister is almost 94 years young. This is my husband's grandmother that he recently re-met a few years ago. She held him as a baby for the first year of his life. After that, Jack's Mom remarried and soon moved away. That's when everybody lost contact. Ten years ago, we reunited with Jack's biological father. Five years ago, we met Jack's grandmother. Last week, we met, for the first time as adults, Jack's Gr-Aunt and 2nd cousin. We tape recorded all the family history and all the fabulous stories of growing up in the FL Keys and Tortugas in the early 1900's. It was a priceless time.


Here is the family photo of 4 generations.

On a fishing note: Jack's family ran the Islamorada Fish House (Market) for many years. Grandma Mary's brother's were the founding owners. Also, Jack's father held the record for largest billfish caught on a pier in Key West for many years. I have some homework to do to dig up the facts on that. When I do, I'll present them here.




Tomorrow, 30th, is our Fair entry deadline! I have been frantically working with the boys to put together photography, artwork, bug boxes, rockets, and potted plants. I doubt I'll even get to the baking tomorrow. I simply have no more energy. I guess we'll have to settle for what we could get done. Life will go on........

UPDATE: We got everything entered and we finished with 37 entries into the Fair. We should have some results in the next couple days on how we did.

10/13/06 Blessed on Friday the 13th!!!!!


M with a short American Red Snapper.

Again with one of the 20 something baby Red Groupers we caught.



Captain Jack with his short Amer. Red Snapper. You can tell they are juvenile ARSs by their black spot on the side.



Big M with his baby Red Grouper.



Capt with his Toad fish, nicknamed the Mother-in-Law fish.

Do not touch one of these!




Our guest Bill came to fish with us. He ended up numerous times like this. There are plenty of Goliath groupers (100-500 lbs) in this area that we were fishing. We could never muscle them up, so the best you can hope for is to stop the pressure and they generally will spit out your hook.





Uhhh ohhhh!!!!!!!!! Shark...... I saw the big sweeping tail and thought lemon but before I could grab the camera, Jack says, "Nurse!"


Indeed, it was a nurse shark.

This same shark took me for a ride a few minutes earlier before going to Bill's squid and somehow managing to hook himself in the pectoral (left side) fin. He still had my line hanging out of his/her mouth.

Estimated 5 ft, 25-30 lbs. Beautiful fish.


Bill had been exhausted from his fishing battles after a long night on the job. He took a nap in the beanbags on the ride in. It looks like he found somebody to curl up with.


We fished the same general area from 11:30 - 5pm. We would have loved to anchor up and catch the evening bite. We were in Mangrove Snapper territory; however, we had to get Bill back on the road to Orlando.


Here's the tally for the day.
L to R: 9 big grunts (4 that escaped the picture) to make Grits-n-Grunts meal one night.
2 Lane Snappers
1 Mangrove Snapper

2 purple grunts (exact name unknown)
20+ baby red groupers
2 small Amer. Red Snappers
1 Nurse shark

No heroes, but we bagged fish and the kids had a fabulous time catching many of these. I played First Mate, helping them. Bill was happy to have caught his first shark (nice one too).
Pretty soon, the bigger fish will migrate into this area for the winter feeding and warmer waters. Fishing only gets better from this point on.

Happy Fishing!
Robin

10/12/06 Quick Thursday Run

This is a pretty bad day of the week for Jack to fish on, but we decided we would take a chance and see what we could find in 4-5 hrs. That's not much time, but........ who knows.

(Photo: boys sleeping on the drive out)
8:30 Out of the driveway
9:00 Bait & Ice - done, launch off the docks. See a manatee right off the back-end of the boat. I'm so glad our motor was off!
9:30 Clear the Port and I drive until Jack gets done playing w/ the GPS & our first coordinates that he made, then lost, then found again.
10:30 21Fathom (F) ridge: natural ridge - 25 mi due east of the Port. Didn't hit clean, blue water until 20 mi., nor any flying fish until then. I love flying fish! I never tire of seeing them take off and smack back into the water a hundred of feet later.

The current was "doable", not as slow as we'd like, but not ripping fast, so we drift fish (no anchor). Jack and I drop our big bottom poles with a nice sardine (double-hooked). I hooked up first. About the time I see shark (or maybe about the time the shark sees me), he gives a big head shake and breaks the line. Part of me doesn't care about the line breaking, but I hate that I lost a brand new 6 oz sinker (lead) to the bottom. The shark will spit the hook in a couple days. We reset up for a 2nd drift and Jack's busy driving, my pole doesn't have hooks on it, so I get to use Jack's pole this go-around. Wham, the bite feels a little different than a shark but sheesh....... it is a shark. He decides to do this nice little aerobatic jump for the camera. Jack takes him off.

11:45am: We leave the sharks after listening to our Fishing Friends on the radio say they too have been skunked on 21F ridge that morning. We decided to drive back towards Pelican Flats (nice 85 ft grassy underwater shoal in the middle of nowhere).

12:15 pm: Can't really find any great spot to anchor, so we anchored over nothing but sent down a yucky chum block - sometimes referred to as a calling card. (see pic) The scent is suppose to drive them crazy. Ahhhh, it is really slow waiting for somebody to jump on your hook.

1pm: Jack catches a nice shark (same age & type as before) on Matthew's pole. Meanwhile, I'm getting nibbles on the big bottom pole. Eventually, I get something (??) strange but instantly gone. I reel up to see what's left....... no hooks, but the shark was gracious enough to not eat the sinker (lead) too. The big guy went straight from my squid to Jack's squid about 6 ft away and proceeds to eat his hooks, also leaving the sinker. Must have been a BIG guy since he razored through 50 lb line like butta.

In the picture, there is a red anchor ball. I'm including this to give you a visual of what it does. You simply hook it around your anchor line, drive directly parallel with where you anchor is locked down on the bottom, then the anchor ball is driven down by the water to the bottom by the anchor. It's upward pressure ends up lifting the anchor out of the sand, dirt or rocks. Once the anchor is free, it floats to the top with the anchor ball. Fabulous invention which saves many muscles from having to pull that stubborn anchor.

Hmmmm? Time to pack it up by 1:30. We took a nice cruise in at 29 mph, eating pb&j sandwiches and various chips & cheese puffs. The seas finally laid down very flat the last 10 miles of the trip. Oh, before I forget, we also saw some great Bonito schools working bait pods. As soon as we were 50-75 ft of them, they'd spook. THAT's how you know it is Bonito. Still, it was cool to see there little football bellies jumping out of the water from a distance. Ok, back to the boat....... Jack topped the boat out at 37 mph with our 225 hp Mercury engine. He was pretty happy to verify that with the GPS.

Most of everything is still on the boat, so we will make a turn-around trip back to our Ol' Fishing Hole - "Snap 176" and see what we can get there. It may be only small snapper or a variety of reef fish, but we're hoping to get something besides sharks there.

We are hoping that by the time we return from vacation, the sharks will have migrated away from our area. (One can only hope!)

Hope to have a more fishy report tomorrow night!
Robin

10/11/06 Pre-offshore Prep Day

It will be a early morning call to be sure, but so far, it looks like we will be making an offshore run tomorrow. If not, Friday looks promising too (another change in the forecast).

On the way home from work, Jack picked up plenty of lead, hooks, sinus meds for our son and my 8x10's for the Fair. Next, we hooked up the ol' gal and took her over to Hess to fill up at $2.19/gal. We haven't seen these prices in quite some time. We ended up putting 52 gals in the tank. It was nice to see the gas needle working properly as we sat endlessly pumping that much gas. Once home, Jack tied the double-hook rigs. Essentially, they are one hook for the eyes of the sardine and one hook to be placed in the abdomen. It increases your chances of hooking whatever is stealing your bait. He made many of these and keeps them neatly on a special piece of cardboard. This way, if we're losing some terminal-end gear, we can get back into the action quicker. One simple knot and we're off fishing again.

Last but not least, I checked our licenses to make sure everything was in order. We aren't planning on catching a snook but I wanted to make sure that was in there for a possible Fri night outing. Snook love to eat at night at the mouth of the inlet. I printed off a new Regulations sheet because I read the regs were updated in July 2006.

Praying for tight lines and calm seas!
Robin

Best dog ever!!!

This is our boxer boy, Jackson. He is not an official fishermen, but he supports our family hobby by having amazing bladder control.

He guards the house while we are gone. As soon as the boat comes around the corner, he is anticipating what bush he is going to attack first. He gives us boxer wiggles and kisses and then does his business.

Jackson loves to smell what is in the cooler. He thinks we smell wonderful when we come home even though we rush to get showers. To him, it must seem like we are gone for endless days but he never holds it against us.

Now that the weather is getting cooler, we have been talking about taking him aboard our boat and let him stayin the cuddy cabin. I wonder if dogs get seasickness?

Thanks for letting me brag on my 4-legged child.
(below, Jackson and M in front of our apt inlet a few years ago.)

10/8/06 Boat maintenance

I know that I've mentioned this before, but I'll repeat it again. One really shouldn't own a boat if they're not mechanically gifted or know a good mechanic. There is always constant upkeep on a boat.

Last trip out, our battery was found to be smoking and thankfully we had the ability to switch off of it and use only the newer one. Today, Jack picked up a new battery and installed it. He also found a clog in a drain in the oil compartment that wasn't working right the past couple weeks. A year ago, he insisted that he had to own an air compressor and it has already paid for itself in upkeep. He blew out the clog in the line, then filled the air on the kids' bikes and air in the suburban's tires.

Last but not least, we had suspect the gas gauge to not be moving correctly. One trip, our gas needle actually went up instead of down. This last trip, we put on over 60-80 miles and the gauge did not move. So, Jack pulled the sealed hatch and he suspicions were correct. The battery acid (or fumes) had corroded the wires to the gas gauge. Once those were fixed, we started up the engine. Not only was the battery working properly, so was the gas gauge. We actually were down at 1/4 tank of gas, not 1/2 tank. That would have been an awful mistake to run out of gas 20-30 miles offshore. We do have a membership to help with that, but still....... it's one of those senseless mistakes to make.

The seas are still 3-5 ft all week. We're praying that they lay down to 2-3 ft by Friday so we can do some bottom fishing. The first reports of a nice mixed bag (variety) of bottom fish were coming in this weekend. We're also considering purchasing a couple nice new bottom reels to pull up this big ones. We'll see.


Tight lines and Happy fishing!
Robin

Today's Buoy stats of #41009

Significant Wave Height (H0):
5.2 ft

Swell Height (SwH):
3.0 ft

Swell Period (SwP):
7.1 sec

Wind Wave Height (WWH):
4.6 ft

Wind Wave Period (WWP):
6.2 sec

Wave Steepness (STEEPNESS):
STEEP

Average Wave Period (AVP):
4.9 sec

9/28-29/06 Tales of our No-Fish Trip (part 2)

The day started slow for all of us. I did dishes, started laundry, generally picking up around the house. Once the men were up and fed, Capt Jack got on the NOAA website and checked out Weather Buoy 41009. Hmmm..... it appeared to be better than yesterday. The 30 minute warning bell was rung and we were off flying. Here's a tip if you get seasickness: take Gingeroot before you leave the house!! Big M and myself both get queasy in anything over 2 ft seas. Friday was the true test on how well this homeopathic remedy works. We both gave it an A+. By the 8th hour, we could feel ourselves getting a little nauseated but overall, everything stayed down and there were no sleepy side-effects.

Ok..... so we are in the water by 11am, sun is rising and it's still around 2- 2.5ft but doable because the wave period was longer (time between waves). Around 60 ft (9-ish miles), we saw some nice weed mats, cast a couple times to a tripletail that was not hungry. We also saw a young hammerhead toying around the weeds which may have made the fish too skittish to eat. We keep moving on. Our goal is to start trolling at Pelican Flats (90 ft - 18 mi SE of the port), which we did. About 45 min into that, we stop the boat for Jack to test a bottom rig. Little did we know that he'd be hammered in seconds. After some time, up comes a reef shark (3 ft). Nope, don't need that. Released after I make a careless mistake of raising it up by it's tail. My idea was to hold tail with left hand and secure shoulders with right hand. Nope. He didn't agree. He swung back and forth a couple times to close for comfort. I dropped him back to the water. Next, I drop down my line w/ sardine & double-hook rig. Whack! I fight it but win the battle and can see another shark on the line. Now that wouldn't be bad except for the fact that I see another line caught in the mess. Oh no! It was our trolling line that we had carelessly left out while bottom fishing. It had gotten wrapped several times around the engine propeller. Jack is working with that while I'm taking my time with an angry shark. Eventually, he yanks his ownself off the hooks and I'm free to help Jack. Mostly, all we could do is raise the engine, thankfully most the line unreeled itself from the prop shaft and Jack cut the line. Unfortunately, his brand new trolling lure drifted down to the abyss. We looked at each other with an 'oh well' because losing a $7 lure is a lot cheaper than anything wrong on an engine. We were blessed to have learned that lesson fairly cheaply.

Jack put in new coordinates and I slow troll with my feet for another 7 mi east while he rerigs all the bottom poles. We came across what looked to be empty milk jugs floating inside a garbage bag. ??? Below it was a nice tripletail. Jack cast to it but before we could convince him it was delicious shrimp, he was high-tailing it. Tripletails are very smart fish. Back to business....We're suppose to be heading for some underwater rubble. What happened was we went to nothing, as Jack had punched in some wrong numbers. Strike 2. At that point, we shared the area with 3 shrimp boats, approx 34 miles offshore. The seas were laying down nicely especially for the Gulf Stream and the water was blue, clean and 82 deg. Ok, so we head back in some to 21F(athom) ridge where some rubble is also suppose to be close to the natural ridge.

We begin dropping lines again and getting major slams to the gunnel (side). I did catch this one silly Offshore Lizardfish. Their mouths really do look like lizards. I'm holding onto him rather securely because he had a mouth full of teeth! Our lines keep breaking (we use PowerPro braid - 50 lbs). We would get the big somethings (hindsight says sharks) up to the near surface and they'd head-shake until the line broke. We lost some kingfish due to that same scenario. Clearly, we need to get rid of the Powerpro braid. My pole is retired eventually. Jack raises a shark next. I'm goofing off with big M's pole (meant for small stuff) and I drop down a shrimp. I finally get a hit and start reeling. I'm taking it really easy because I only have 30 lb line on that lighter action pole. The thing headshakes twice and we know its going to be shark but we finally get it up. Jack lets me snap this picture before releasing it.

Well, we've had our share of mishaps and blessings. I think somewhere along the way I forgot to mention that we kept smelling this awful gagging smell. We've smelt it before but thought it was something at the port. So, Capt Jack starts sniffing and pulling hatches in the floor area. Upon opening the batteries hatch, our #2 battery is smoking and it is coming close to oozing battery acid everywhere! All is not lost because we have the ability to switch off to only battery #1 which did solve the problem. However, this could have been a bad situation for which we feel very thankful never did come to pass. We never travel without tools, extra supplies and a membership card to Sea Tow. Most of all, we never leave the port without a prayer for safety. One can never be in full control of every situation.

After raising the anchor for the last time, my left contact comes out leaving my eye in severe pain. Strike 3 or maybe closer to 4. Big M and I take to the comfort of the beanbags while Little M and Daddy drive the 24 miles back to Port Canaveral (from 6:10 to 6:45pm). I catch some awesome sunset pictures right before we hit the set of buoys. Jack takes a last ditch effort to cast his yellow jig to the buoys while I take photos of my baby and myself.

Just as we are into the inlet, the big casino boats are pulling out for the night. It's great to see all the lights on the boats. The sky is fading from pink to a dim purple. Once we are at the docks, I went ahead and got the trailer and did my job. Jack did offer but I was up to the challenge even without the contact. I have monovision, so as long as I have my right contact, I'm good. Everything goes smoothly which is wonderful, given I have the Friday night heckling crowd at the overlooking restaurant. It smells good and the music is fun, but the people sure do make me nervous. After the boat is hooked up and ready to pull out, some folks are cracking jokes. Most people mean well and compliment my ability as a lady angler working a big boat; however, this threesome was more like a thorn in the side. After I jumped in the suburban, they yelled to Jack that he was in trouble now, which made no sense to me. He was not in trouble for anything. I was so happy to be heading home.

We made a couple jokes that next time one of Jack's coworkers has trouble backing down the ramps, he can say, "My wife does that better half-blinded and in the dark."

9/28-29/06 Tales of our No-Fish Trip (part 1)

First off, let me preface this by saying that sometimes the NOAA officials make a call earlier in the week and then as late as the morning of, can change the forcast. That is what happened to us on Thursday. (Jetty Park Pier in picture)

Capt Jack was asked to work this and next weekend for a coworker. That is a long time without any sort of break, so what we did was look for a fishable 2 days that he could take only 1 day off of work. Next week, it looks like we'll have high seas from H. Isaac passing by in the Atlantic. We made a decision that Thurs/Friday would be our days to see if we could capitalize on the migrating cobia & mahi mahi. As it turned out, Thursday was not so good a choice for fishing. Because of the cool front that blew through the night before, the winds were directly from the west. Nice at the shore, but pretty sloppy offshore. Wind and wave action fighting each other, along with a current difference. We made it only 9 miles in following seas before we turned around at a shrimp boat and decided to follow it slowly back in towards the oncoming waves while looking for scavenger cobia looking for by-catch. There may have been cobia around, but it was really hard to concentrate on that and hold on. The water was a cloudy green and I'm sure anything pelagic (surface feeding) was well below our view. We did take in a spectacular wild dolphin show who seemed to enjoy the topsy-turvey water. Some went full airborne and some did side-slams onto the next wave. I'm sure they had their fill of bycatch from the shrimp boat and were simply enjoying life. We did catch a broken weedline that lead back towards shore. Looked that over carefully for a few miles before it ended. As we approached the beach, the water settled down enough to pick up speed and land very close to the beach. We threw the anchor down and proceeded to use up some shrimp. Jack found the right spot that was holding whiting. Me....... I found nothing.
Eventually, we moved the anchor a bit closer to shore and handed the poles over to the kids. I guess an hour went by and nothing. It was going to be a slow day! We started at 8:30 from home and now it was about 1:30. We were lulled into thinking maybe we could try going offshore one more time. We got about 2 miles and turned around again. This time, we anchored just inside the inlet, near the northside, but not close enough to get in trouble w/ the Coast Guard but far enough over that the big cruise ships could pass by us. Thursday is a big departure day.

The kids and I continued to fish our new spot while Jack went into the "sauna bath" cuddy to take a nap. While we only had two bites, which both stingrays released on their own, it still was fun in it's own way because the young stingrays were migrating through and doing their own aerobatics. Some went as high as 5 ft out of the water and then come down with a hard smack. I don't understand the purpose in this, but it was fun to watch. I had thought that it was possible to have one land in the boat accidentally. Meanwhile, the kids were thoroughly bored with the lack of bites and turned their attention to playing with shrimp in the livewell. They were giving them names like Snap, Crackle, Pop, Snap2, Crackle 2, Pop2 and Jane. They were making them walk on their hands.

Finally, this gianormous Coast Guard boats passes by us. Hmmmm..... he's got a lot of buoys on the deck. So, I grab the camera and catch them changing out Buoy #12A. How cool is that?

It certainly was entertaining for a short while as we tried our best to be quiet and let the Captain catch an afternoon nap. Jack had been up since 10pm the night before working. It was worth the effort letting him sleep. Because he was rested after an hour or so, we were able to stay out until dusk.

To the right is the same Coast Guard ship pulling up the buoy. It is so hard to tell on this blog uploading. It was not nearly as far away as this picture makes it appear.




After Jack woke up, we headed out about a mile and the seas were still building so it dashed any hopes we had of getting offshore on Thursday. We reanchored on the southside of the Jetty Park rocks. Every cast (using shrimp on a 3/0 hook or smaller) produced a nibble. Some big. Some little. Mostly, we were robbed. I did land this good size Black Margate which is in the Croaker family. They are good eating but he was released after we I.D'd him. We only put him in the livewell to keep him healthy while we fumbled through the book.

When we ran out of shrimp, we took a slow cruise down to Cocoa Pier and back up. Actually our eldest son was the Captain for the trip. Daddy and I got to enjoy a few minutes of sunset and conversation alone.

Once we got back to the docks, little M and I picked up the trailer and it is my job to get our Mako out of the water. We have some pretty nifty teamwork going. Of course, less current and wind always is bonus.

Upon getting to the (un)staging area, somebody had carelessly parked their truck/boat rig blocking the majority of the entrance. I pulled up to the exit and backed in, which was a first for me. I must admit that I did better than I thought I would. Anyhow, even by the time we were totally stowed and ready for the road, a couple of the folks were returning to the truck. I would appear that they took their cooler over to the cleaning tables to clean fish. Niiiiiiice. Not so ironically, their boat was named Redneck Yacht. You might be a Redneck if.........a) you name your boat after it b) you leave your rig blocking the road to the staging area. If this had been a weekend, there would have been 250 lb men waiting on the driver to have words.
Part two to continue above.............