SOME OF THE NON-KEEPERS
by Robin

3 ft Reef Shark (sorry..... I took 4 of them and they were all awful)


Unknown Crab


Crab entertaining the troops


"Short" Snapper (under legal size limit of 20"). Probably 13-15".


Another "Short" 19-19.5" range


Juvenile Gag Grouper (look for the blood droplet falling off it) These make great eats when they're bigger.


Happy Fishing! Our local seas have risen back to the 3-6 ft range again.

PICTURES of BLACK FRIDAY!!!
by Robin

Here's the cooler shot......... impressive, huh? There are 11 fish in there.



The line-up of characters (brown one on the left is young Mangrove Snapper)



These are Lane Snappers


These are Red Snapper which have to be over 20" in the Atlantic Ocean to be legally kept. Granted these aren't monsters, but they're definitely keepers!



Here is my big Lane Snapper next to a Kingfish which was kept for smoking and making dip.


Here I am with my 2 American Red Snapper. On the smaller one (I'll let you try to figure that one out-haha), we had a boat passing by us at full speed, 3 men hollering for me to get it up. I needed that adrenalin rush. I caught the bigger one on my last drop with the last squid. It's what I call a "Hail Mary" pass (think football). Sure enough, I made a touchdown! I grunted and groaned. You'd think I was in full-labor with trying to pull that fish off the bottom. My eldest sent the last cigar minnow down on the same pass and put a keeper Lane Snapper in the box.



Then, we set off at 4:30, West, for home. This was day 2 on the ocean and God paints the most amazing sunsets. I love the orange colors towards the sun, setting over Port Canaveral.


But on the other side of the sky, God painted beautiful blues & lavenders. Ack, it's all beautiful.



Then, after the sun disappeared, a glow hit off the puffy clouds to our north. There wasn't a bad section of the sky. It was amazing.


Today, we cleaned the boat & fish. Now, I'm off to fold laundry & get us ready for church tomorrow. God is good, all the time.

Happy Fishing!

BLACK FRIDAY!!!! - bringing home the goods!
by Robin


If you're here to hear about shopping deals, you're thinking wrong. We did back to back trips out (Thurs/Friday). Thursday, we pulled in over 50 short Snapper, no exaggeration. Went home "skunked" and with one child green. (Note to self: never play a Gameboy on a rocking boat) Friday, it took some bribery to get my youngest back out on a boat but it turned out to be more beautiful than Thursday and we tried different locations and different tricks. It all paid off. I've got to go help Jack with boat & fish chores but I'll post up pictures later in the day and throughout the weekend.

Tally:
3 Red Snapper
6 or 7 Lane Snapper
1 Mangrove Snapper
1 Kingfish

Released:
3 sharks
1 remora
50+ small red snapper
1 Kingfish

Cobia are just north of our fishing area so hopefully that will be in our future. I thought I saw a smaller on Thursday but he kept on going and I was already fighting a shark. Friday, I'm pretty certain I saw a Manta Ray jump partially out of the water. We couldn't relocate him once we got the boat turned around.

Happy Fishing!! There are some very happy fishermen in our area this week.

CEDAR KEY
by Robin

It was short & sweet............ and COLD! Don't let the beauty fool you. It was 50 and dropping fast. Fish did not bite so mostly we ate and stayed inside.



We had a day & a half to kill so we ran over to the Gulf coast to eat some seafood and look at beautiful sunsets.



Caught a beautiful picture of the evening glow on this white egret as well.


More pictures to follow in the forthcoming days. Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends & family who ready my blog.

SHUTTLE REPORT
by Robin

Photo above - NASA by Troy Crider

I'm not sure there is just one word I can use to describe how beautiful last night's launch was. It was straight out of a Spielberg movie between a clear sky, perfectly hung full moon in the backdrop and a launch that lit up the sky, brighter than the sun. I don't know if NASA thought about the moon when they planned their launch window or if God did that as a little message of saying "I still create good things".


Photo above - Reuters

Either way, it made for one magical night for the thousands of viewers last night. My heart was bursting with pride for our country and for our brave astronauts who take this risk to serve a greater cause.


Next two photos: NASA & AP

Endeavour mission is to do a makeover on the ISS. They will have a 5 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 kitchen home when it is all over. Oh and please,..... please NASA, make sure you put in a nice plasma flat screen with a Wii or Guitar hero or something!! With all our technology, you think they'd give them something else to do besides catch M-n-M's darting around the room.

Here is the AP article here.

I didn't bother with my own camera because it doesn't do night skies well. I did my best to search for the best that internet had taken and offer them, with credit, here. Enjoy!!!

Photo below by HapsInFL (blogger). This is more like what we saw from the empty lot at the corner of King's Hwy & US 1. Top left would be the shuttle a couple minutes into take-off and heading out over the Atlantic ocean. Moon to the right.

LAST TEST - promise!! It's getting better. This one is for comparison w/ image below.

Testing 3 - clarity & size

Testing - photobucket

TESTING 1 - new size

SUNDAY AFTERNOON
by Robin

We traveled to Kelly Park on Merritt Island, dunked the boat in the water & tied it up.

Jack worked on the trailer. 1) Put on the glyde slicks (in white) and 2) added a safety light across the back. I babysat the kids at the playground and made sure nobody boarded the boat.

A most gorgeous sunset. The moon was already high in the sky. Beautiful!! This was look pretty much straight up but slightly facing south.

This was my view looking west. What's that saying about pink skies, sailor's delight?

An artist couldn't paint a more beautiful sky. These little photos don't do it justice.

We also ran into 2 of Jack's coworkers who were out enjoying the water & watching the Blue Angels do their show over Cape Canaveral. We could see a little bit of the show but nothing compared to what they saw from the water (N. on Banana River).

Oh, the glyde slicks worked WONDERFULLY!!! Totally worth the small investment.

MR. HOLLYWOOD has the Magic Touch!
by Robin


Our waitress at Grills, the waterside restaurant, kept calling our son, Mr. Hollywood cuz he never took his sunglasses off through lunch.

Anyhow, he won the friendly, family competition. He got the first fish, most fish and largest fish. Congrats Little Man.

This is a Jack Crevelle, which is inedible by most standards. Fun fight & pretty yellow fins.

Once again, the cobalt blue Shakespeare Firebird is the hot pole on a cold day, where pretty much, the entire bite was shut down due to the overnight front moving into the area. We couldn't pick up a flounder for nothing around the locks. I couldn't even get a puffer or catfish to bite. Oh well.

We did put 62 gallons of fuel in the boat for next time we go out. Many friends went out on Saturday and loaded up on Red Snapper. Weather was pretty nice for them. Today, the wind was blowing hard & it was nippy early on but warmed up in the afternoon. We still were waiting on our selanoid part to fix the trim tabs. Offshore wasn't an option for us regardless of weather conditions.

More blogging to continue tomorrow. I have stories. We also did trailer work on Sun afternoon that I want to mention. Oh and I have an amazing couple sunset pictures.

Happy Fishing!

GLYDE SLICKS
by Robin

See product here at Bass Pro Shop

Jack went today to pick up some Glyde Slicks, which essentially are strips you adhere to your carpeted trailer bunks. They are designed to help your boat slide right off the trailer and into the water.

Every since we converted our roller trailer to bunks, we've had trouble moving that 6000 pounds of fiberglass. This should do the trick and they're very reasonably priced. Infact, comments left about the product insist they work almost too good. You'd better keep your boat hooked up to the trailer until it is over water. I am looking forward to the change. I have really disliked the transition to bunks. I never thought I'd say this at first, but I did like the roller trailer over time. The horsepower & rollers did all the work for me.

We're hoping that Jack's selanoid shows up in the mail by tomorrow. That way, Sunday afternoon, he can take the boat to the ramp and put on the sticks and then work on the trim tabs quickly before having to head back to evening church.

The PLAN
If all goes well, I'd love to head out fishing on Monday morning. The seas are staying approx 2-3 ft. Fishermen are heading out in droves tomorrow morning. Supposedly, red snapper are stacked up in certain areas. We just need to catch us a few and bag some to hold us through the winter.

And the timing couldn't be more perfect!! Gas was down at $2.16/ gal today. If there is a silver lining in this economic disaster, it is that gas prices have come down.

Pray for us to be able to get all this done and get fishing by Monday!!

NEXT WEEKEND??
by Robin

This blog is practically dead with all the wind blowing for months now. It's been 2 wks ago today that we went to Mosquito Lagoon in our boat.

While we were on that trip, Jack noticed that the Trim Tabs were not working so yesterday, he was able to trouble-shoot that on his day off. Selanoid trouble. Did I spell that right honey?

Anyhow, that part is ordered. The seas are starting to lay down the latter half of the week and into the weekend. If they can just stay down long enough for us to fish on Monday, that would be fabulous. I'll let you know as we get closer to that date.

Happy Fishing!