Robin's Reports

Whiting Wonderland - April 27, 2007

We needed a much desperate break from life and yet the seas were not cooperating with us. Four foot seas @ 5 sec intervals, makes for a jumbo-sized washing machine on the Atlantic.

Let's meet the crew aboard First Choice : Captain Jack

Shipmates - Big guy (10yo) and Lil' Man (7yo) We use anonymous names because they're such stealthy fishermen, we don't want to give away their identity.

And this is me, Robin. First mate and official fish blogger & homsechool mom.

Before we could even pull out of the inlet, we were greeted by this majestic US Navy ship. We saluted the men. They waved back. Duh.

We did stick our noses out of the inlet only to come back in and anchor up in front of Jetty park. We only had 1 hit, resulting in no fish on board the entire 45 min we stayed there. It's hard to believe but there were still 3-4 ft rollers inside the inlet too.

Here is big guy with his "fish on". Daddy looks on.

After a while, we decided to pull anchor and see if the ocean had calmed down enough to fish the beaches. The wind was from the east, so there was no luck in having a calm beach and yet, we put out the anchor there too. Fortunately for us, the whiting were eating all the shrimp and sand fleas that we could get down to them. Our lil' man was fishing on the hot rod & reel of the day : Shakespeare - Firebird in Cobalt blue, which was set up perfectly. We all had to downsize hooks to catch up with Lil' man's numbers. He probably had a dozen fish in the cooler before we all started to catch anything. Here he is sporting his Firebird & a Whiting.

We moved big brother over to the same side of the boat and then he started gaining in numbers. This wasn't his largest, but he did end up catching the biggest whiting of the day. It actually took his pole to the gunnel (rail).

I'm going to leave this picture a little bit bigger so you can see what I'm talking about. Big guy caught this fish and I knew instantly that it was different. See those 2 sharp fangs? This is a weakmouth or yellow mouth trout (has 2 names). He was illegal size, so he got to go finish growing up.

This is the face you get when you have a 7 yo who's caught so many fish that he is tired. He fished backwards a couple times. It just goes to show you that the *hot* pole is hot no matter what your technique. ha ha. I was playing First Mate (i.e. fish remover & re-baiter) at first, but did get to borrow the hot pole later that afternoon and catch me a couple whiting. It was fun if you closed your eyes and imagined you were fighting a cobia. You can find great sport in any size fish if you have light enough tackle.

We ended up with a total of 25 whiting for dinner and threw back just as many. We only caught the 2 species all day. I did think I saw the back of a young tarpon in the waves, but couldn't prove it to anybody. They joked I was seeing seabirds. Well, there was a lot of joking onboard today. As you can see on my shirt, "What happens on Spring Break, stays on Spring Break", so I can't tell you all the funnies. Captain's rules, not mine.

Take a kid fishing!

Robin