3/30/09 - NO FISH, but great pics!

by Robin

While I'm not happy that we spent 2.5 hrs and several gallons of gas running from Port Canaveral to Patrick AFB and back not catching fish, it occured to me that many of you might like to see the warm-weather pictures.

The weather conditions were not great for fishing early on. Jack got up early, checked date, cancelling the trip. Then, went to Home Depot to get some honey-do supplies before the rest of us woke up. By 9:30, sun was out......we decided to hook the boat up and take a look for ourselves. I packed a nice picnic lunch and off we went.

Here are the boys driving out of the Port. Jack is supervising because there is a lot of boat traffic. Not so much recreational boats but many commercial boats & freighters & cruiseliners.


We were passed up pretty quickly by this group who were eager to be pulled around while on a parachute. Not me. I don't have the guts to do be pulled on a rope to a fast moving boat. Here's the number if you feel like it.


We were also passed up by this party boat of fishermen. These are pretty reasonably priced and sometimes they will put you on fish. I can't speak for this boat in particular.


We passed this NASA - USA ship that pulls the rocket boosters back to shore. I'm going to have a fantastic post coming up later this week on this entire process. A friend of mine from USA (United Space Alliance) took photos of the recovery and shared them. WAIT until you see this proces. Grab your kids!! You probably won't find this photos elsewhere.


Mom, start googling and getting prices for your next cruise. I'm not sure if I've seen this one before.


These things really are floating cities. We have to be pretty far away from them to get a full picture.


We saw these guys last time we were out with the whales. I guess we like to fish the same days. We both were heading down the beaches.


Nothing but variations of blue. Not a cloud in the sky all day. It was horrible on Sunday with all the rain, cold and today we started with rain & clouds. But, there was a 24 hr window of perfect weather (except for the winds that didn't die down).


There were plenty of white caps once we got out from the protection of the Cape. This isn't good sightfishing weather.



This jig saw a lot of wind but no salt water.


On the way back home, my focus on fish died and my focus on artsy pics increased. The boys decided to chill and talk about our eldest's time at Universal Studios on Sunday.


He had a lot to say for hours. He's such a cool kid. Loves theme parks!


Here is my little man who is no longer very little. I need to get him another alias. And another life jacket. Mold. It happens every year to their jackets.


I love how the kids are totally unphased at the splashing going on over their shoulders. They have very little fears when it comes to offshore or inshore fishing. I love that. They never think twice about losing sight of land. For them, it's always an adventure, or..... sometimes boring meaning they can take a good nap for hours.


This pelican flew by and I couldn't resist a quick shot. This is Cocoa Beach.


Here's Captain Jack, my hubby. He's still scanning the waters for cobia or tripletail. Not me. I'm staring at him.


This is the NOAA oceanic vessel, BOLD. I have no idea what it does. Somebody tell me if you find out. Impressive size.


I have no idea when these tanks showed up in the 1st basin. I don't know what they're there for. This is all military - government property. Hmmm????


Ok, stick with me this week. My next post is on the houses & landmarks up and down Cocoa Beach.
Happy Fishing!

Stay tuned..... I think we're a "Go" for tomorrow.

New camera, new batteries, memory card inserted.... I think I'm ready if the weather cooperates.

COBIA DINNER
by Robin


Our eldest caught this nice keeper the other week. It was his first cobia. It was a perfect size for him to learn on since they are very strong fish.



Well, it was time to pull out a freezer pack of cobia. I decided to use our lime-grilled-mahi-mahi- recipe on it. It was good but definitely don't skip the salt. I needs flavor. (Jack makes it better than I do. I don't know how, but his are grilled to perfection.



The cobia was excellent but I'm a sucker for lime & garlic (salt) on my fish. I also added some fresh dill and thyme with the seasonings.



Yum!!

This week, the seas are blown up towards 6 ft again so we will have to wait for everything to calm down before we can head offshore for more cobia & snapper. If the water temps dictate 80 deg, we might even have to do some dolphin fishing (mahi mahi - see pic at top).

Happy Fishing!

A WEEK AGO.....
by Robin


Was it already a week since I last blogged? A week+ since I last fished? Wow, where does the time go? We've been busy preparing artwork for the Brev Co Fair. The kids did a few pictures for the Marine Division.

Jack and I had to clean out the back of the boat tonight because of all the oak tree seed pods making such a huge pollen mess! After removing those seedy messes, we had to wash & brush down all the yellow pollen. What a mess. I'm still finding those seed-thingies in my hair.

Anyhow, I wanted to take a trip down memory lane. Not a long trip, but to our trip when we waited for the submarine to pass along with this beautiful sportfisher boat. They were also prepared for cobia hunting.



The same trip where this beautiful dolphin & unpictured friend joined us for a ride.



I caught only 1 pic of him on the bow before he took off. (look closely, he's in front.)



And revisit that moment of first seeing the whale off of Patrick AFB and how exciting that was.



Then being waaaay too close to them, accidentally, and seeing all of the baby's head. (this is cropped)



Breaking down what exactly was what in that baby whale picture....



Then, both of them swimming off to deeper water. They had been just as curious of us as we had been of them. But, then when they wanted to book it to deeper waters, they did.

Sometimes it is nice to be still and remember good memories. We had our chance to fish on Monday but we decided to take care of loose ends around the house. Now, the seas have been blown up to 6 ft all this week. We had a bit of a cool front come through. I'm not sure what this does for cobia season. We will have to reevaluate everything next week. For now, it's just good to be hangin' around the house with the family.

Happy Fishing,
Robin

To Sharie - batteries
by Robin

Sharie, you made me laugh by commenting that I have to promise to never go fishing without extra batteries.

The truth is that I brought extra batteries AND I confiscated 2 more batteries from our emergency ditch bag. My big problem was the the rechargeables are nearing the end of their life. Even on a full charge, they were too underpowered for the new camera and it kept turning off. Totally useless and I stomped my feet on the boat. With the other AA batteries, I got a few more shots, but even still.... the camera would shut down some. I'm *really* glad my life didn't depend on THOSE batteries.

For me, it is a learning lesson on two levels. I need Lithium - ultimate performance batteries for the camera. But it made me realize that maybe I should buy something similar to that quality for the emergency ditch bag. I don't really need the energizer bunny drowning on me in 5 hrs when I'm floating at sea. kwim?

So, I'm 0 for 2 on the "camera-at-sea" photography. Must take Memory card and multiple sets of LITHIUM batteries offshore!!!

Later today, we're heading to the Cobia Tournament weigh-in. Should be fun.

3/12/09 WHALE Report
by Robin

We've been living life to the fullest, inspite of colds & viral bugs. It is a spectacular week to be living in the Cape Canaveral greater area. While the shuttle launch was cancelled on Wed night, that would have been cool for all our tourtists. Thursday, we went out cobia hunting (after a full moon) and ended up seeing whales instead. Friday, we were able to see the TICO Warbird Air Show in Titusville. We've had amazing weather in the lower 80's - full of sun and little wind. Spring Breakers have come from around the country to flood our roads & beaches. Tomorrow, we will go down to the marinas and see the weigh-in for the cobia tournament between the Central Florida fishermen vs the Florida Sportsman fishermen. Afterwards, they have a big fish dinner for everyone to enjoy some cobia.

So back to the fishing part.....

Thurs morning, we were loaded up, about to pull away from the driveway when our eldest runs out of the car to puke on the side of the driveway. Not good. After a 30 minute delay, we (& a bowl & some towels) were headed to the docks. It was probably close to 10am and there still were several boats putting in late. The parking lot was near full.

We were greeted by nice men with machine guns who insisted that a fleet of us cobia fishermen go to the side until a submarine pulled into his basin.


One guy felt like he didn't need to follow the rules. I really hate to poke fun of this guy, but honestly.... who does he think he is?? James Bond? Bond is having a martini, on the left. Two gunners in center. Sub in back-right of picture.


Well, the guys with the machine guns (both boats) reminded him that he was not James Bond. He turned tail and ran.


So, we get that over with and we are able to cruise offshore quickly, heading SE. We stopped a bit early, maybe 40 ft of water and I got up top to look for cobes. We had heard they were further out but we were in 71-73 deg water, so why go further. The only problem was that we didn't see any cobes.

We saw many turtles with no cobia around them.


We saw a few bouys, balloons and miscellaneous things floating in the water.


At one point, two bottlenose dolphins came to join us for a quick ride. They didn't stay very long which was ok with us since we hoped to sight fish and didn't need them hanging around to spook them.


I don't know what it is about the dolphin this year. They really seem to like our bow. (Makes for nice photos) Pretty soon, a couple hrs went by and we started breaking out lunch while our hands were still clean. Our sick son tried sleeping in the "cuddy of death" but that only resulted in one more wave of purging. That was more seasickness than virus. He decided it was better to sleep in the fresh air instead.


It was obvious that I couldn't find anything in the clean water for all the clouds overhead. They put so much glare over the water, so we headed back towards the shoreline where there were less clouds. (pic - looking SE. Clouds were clear to the West/right)


On the way back in, we did come across one more turtle who was snoozing just under the water. I snapped a couple nice shots of him. A turtle we found a few more miles in had a barracuda under it. I was all excited because for a split-second, I thought it might have been our first cobia under a turtle.


Back towards the beach, the water gets dirtier and greener. I took this pic of a Mama & her baby not far off the beach. This dolphin are more shy than the offshore bunch.


So, I'm doing my best to put Jack on a cobia when I see our 2nd tripletail of the day. The first one was on the way out and he spooked at the sight of a shrimp. Imagine that. This one.... oh well.... we were fighting wind and weight of the sinker. Jack took the weight off and ended up making a bulls-eye on his head when the wind took hold of Jack's shrimp and put it there.


It spooked and went under. While spinning around waiting to see if the trip would resurface, I spot a big black thing south of us (Patrick AFB). Um...ok, it sprays mist too. I started screaming, "A whale. It's a whale!!!!" I was beyond excited because I thought we had missed them with reports of some being in Jacksonville already. I missed last year's migration due to boat restoration. I was missing my WHALES!


Above is a pic of the Mama's nose which came right up out of the water. Amazing. What a sight, I can't even explain. These are Northern Right Whales and they're endangered, if I'm not mistaken. However, they pass our area every year and we've always seen one with a calf, so they must be prolific. They're about 25 ft in length.

We stopped our boat and drifted towards shore (& them) and they also must have been somewhat curious because they chose not to dive under and leave us. I put the zoom on and captured this great pic of the baby's head. Mama was close behind, but I was unable to capture pictures of her enormous size due to my batteries running dead (ugh).


Anyhow, we left them alone after that encounter and continued north towards Port Canaveral looking for more tripletail or cobia. Unfortunately, we didn't see any. We also felt compelled to get our son home to bed and let him rest. There's no harm in calling it a day earlier than normal.

While I don't like "skunkings" any more than the other fishermen, I must say it was nice to put up the coolers & tackle quickly. No fish to clean. No stuff to rinse and/or bleach. It was a good family night watching a movie & getting the kids off to bed early.

It looks like Monday may be another good day to go out. Cobia season only lasts a couple weeks and then it's over. They either go back to the bottom or head north.

Happy Fishing!
Robin

MORE DOLPHIN PICS
by Robin





My favorite (below). Spotted dolphin.


I just missed the break in the water. Sometimes they jumped as they took a breath.




Oops, got the sizing wrong on this one. Sorry. My bad.

PHOTOS are UP - Story to come later.
by Robin


As you can tell from the pictures below, those two jigs (pink & glow-in-the-dark) were the winning ticket yesterday.












Anybody care to take a stab at which fish weighs more?? Guess the weights?