SUSHI
by Robin

For all my life, this has never once been something that interested me until recently when Pioneer Woman posted up a "how to make" on her food section of her website. Well, I like rice and I like veggies. I love fish but wasn't certain about raw fish. Then, Giada had a show on sushi. Everybody who eats this stuff has the biggest yummy faces and noises. I figured it was time that I grew up and tried it.

We were at a wedding held aboard Carnival's Glory cruise ship. It was lovely, albeit confusing to navigate a cruise boat's decks, and the reception was held in the Disco lounge. Interesting. Anyhow, they had some expensive catered food there. Cavier and sushi, lamb and spring rolls, etc. I wasn't up to cavier, but I grabbed 1 California roll and 1 Sesami roll. I left behind those cute salmon flower-like treats on a cracker. That was a little too much raw fish for me.

Jack said I was crazy to eat raw fish from a catered service. Raw tuna off our boat would be healthier than this. But, stubborn middle-child that I am, I tried it anyhow.

My first bite was into the California roll and ripping apart the seaweed mat. Ewww, but at least the first taste seemed to be salty rather than weird. Texturally, there were no surprises. Ok, not good yummy flavors, but not bad either. I survived seaweed and rice. Now, the 2nd bite was going to have to include the fish and some avacado. I love avacado. The fish mixture, I could not say the same for.

First off, my thought was of rotten small shrimp. If there was fish in there, I didn't taste it. It seemed more like old bait that's been sitting in my garbage can for days. I'm really surprised that there wern't flies swirling over the sushi rolls. I couldn't even finish it. Something deep in my gut told me that this might be the beginnings of food poisoning. Well, that didn't happen, which was very good for everyone involved. But I tried to smile through it all because some of Jack's coworkers were observing my first experience.

Putting on my big-girl britches, I tried the sesame roll but I thought I would cleverly disguise any fish flavor with wasabi sauce. Big mistake. I like spicy but I don't like fire-alarm hot. I don't do mustard sauce at Chinese restaurants which is similar to wasabi. I cannot recall what the actual sushi roll tasted like. Maybe I blocked it out since the entire sinus fire took priority in my head.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why people pay for this stuff. Why is it that they make all sorts of yummy noises? Why do they roll their eyes back like they're dying and going to heaven? How does one aquire a taste for rotten bait? Honestly, I cannot fathom ever growing accustomed to these flavors. Why should I? Jack makes the best cooked fish of anybody in this world.

All these things are a mystery to me. Maybe I'll get those answers in heaven, if it even matters at that point. For now, I'm going to stick closely to my cooked fish and shellfish.

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE
by Robin (photos by Chuck)

While out fishing last Friday, we ran into Jack's coworkers on another boat. One of them was kind enough to take pictures of us. I'm trying not to be embarassed of my outfit but you have to remember that minutes before I was in a bathing suit and I did my best to cover up as I saw them approaching. Obviously, I didn't get everything straightened out but I'm covered. LOL Hey, it's hot out there.

Here is Jack having a chat with Mike, the Capt. & owner. We were having lunch on the cuddy cabin top while trolling.



The kids and I are a little bored. I forgot that Chuck was still snapping pictures otherwise I would have smiled. I love how my thighs are hidden. LOL.



Here is Jack holding up his cobia. It looks smaller than it was. Trust me, it is legal size. I think it either was curved or angled odd.



Here's some perspective for you.


After a while, we started back to trolling which is why you see the outriggers set up and lines dragging behind the boat.





Bye!!
Happy Fishing!

MORE MANTA pics
by Robin

I got a few more of these downsized & ready for blogging.

Looking upward


Swimming to the left


Manta fin right over the back end. Head is raised out of the water slightly. Swimming to the left.


This is when we were farther offshore and trolling for mahi. The yellow plastic thing is called a "teaser" because it rattles back-n-forth on the water surface to attract the fish. Then, as you can see, a green/yellow "skirted ballyhoo" is trailing behind. It is to simulate a baitfish attempting to catch the teaser. Meanwhile, the bigger predator fish goes for the kill and ends up with a hook in the corner of his/her mouth.

4/24/09 - COBIA
by Robin

Fishing was very slow for Jack on Thurs, the 23rd. But, we still decided to head out Friday as I needed my blue-water fix and it was another day of no wind. The forecast predicted that the winds would kick up again for another week after that, so we went.

We had no expectations except to have a fun family day out there. We were not disappointed.

God blessed us before we even dunked the water with having an internet fishing friend give us a tip on where he had seen some manta rays & cobia when we was up flying in a helicopter for his job. WOW. What a tip.



We followed him out, but tried not to tail him too much. We turned left at the port entrance and followed the coast of the cape until we came across a beautiful "girl" who was practically sunbathing while slow-cruising her way north. Jack made his first cast in front of her and instantly he was hooked up with a cobia.



I love it when your morning all falls into place so smoothly. Fish in the cooler within the first 30 minutes. We casted more to "her" but she didn't have any more cobia following her. Then we spotted 2 "boys" who were in a big hurry to swim south to our gal. Jack cast towards them but they were clipping so fast on the surface that the jig & one's wing met in the middle and ...... resulted in losing our favorite pink jig.



All three did a little dance, spinning around and eventually the "boys" took off, leaving our "girl" alone to slow cruise again northbound. We did see one free-swimming cobia but he was very spooked so we were wondering if our friend had already played with this one before we got here. Regardless, he was not going to help us make our limit on cobia for the day.

From there, we went to a shoal called 8A. We were looking around for any prospective bottom dwellers when I spotted a school of small mahi mahi. I chummed to them right away but they weren't having any of it. They disappeared in a hurry.

Jack wasted no time in deciding to head out to deeper water to troll some lines to possibly pick up some bigger mahi. Well.... long story short... no mahi for us. Very few were being caught in 300-600 ft water. It may still be slightly early in the season. Water temps were 77-78 which is borderline low-end of what the phins like.

We ran into our friends out on the water. These are Jack's coworkers.





From here, Jack decided to end our day, only I didn't know that. I had taken to sunbathing on the top of the big cooler. I asked what we were doing. Jack said, "Going home." I guess I gave the biggest, disappointing, "What? I haven't even wet a hook." Jack never questioned or replied. He meerly plugged in new numbers and south we headed.

We ended up anchoring on a great little spot. Lots of little fish - blk sea bass and short snappers & a couple grunts. Nothing for the cooler.



We left that spot at 5:30 for the port, 20 mi away. Pulled in the driveway at 7:30pm. Finished with boat & fish cleaning by 9:30pm. Wow, what a cool day.



I'll have to post up more pictures in another day or two of the Kennedy Space Center launch pads. We saw a rare treat. Both pads had shuttles sitting on them. I'll make a separate post for that.

Happy Fishing!!
Robin

CRAZY WIND
by Robin

I'm sure you all think I've died and gone to Facebook, but I'm still here. The wind has been crazy for at least 3 weeks in a row, creating 6 feet waves regularly. The poor offshore fishermen are foaming at the mouth waiting for the first day of calm seas.

Meanwhile, we couldn't just foam & look rabid, so we decided to cheer ourselves up with a little seafood festival again. It's amazing what a pound of this and pound of that will do for your taste buds.

Many of you may know my personal chef, AKA Capt Jack.


He got the steam going and popped in a few of these babies (3 lbs).


Then, we put 2 lbs of LIVE clams and 1 lb of skewered shrimp on the grill.


Oh my.... my mouth is watering again. Please excuse me. These were sooo delicious.



When the clams popped open, we put them on the bar to start digging into. Don't skimp on the Crystal's Hot Sauce for your clams.

I couldn't even show you a picture of the rest of it because I was so busy stuffing my face with seafood & vegan butter. Oh my.....

Well, the seas finally calmed down today and several of Jack's coworkers took the day off (they're slow) and did the buddy boating system waaaay offshore. Sadly, the big fish they marked all had lock-jaw for all but 1 of the guys. They did weed through some short red snapper but not much was out there. Water was green & dirty all the way out to 200+ ft of water. Only a few dolphin were caught by other boaters.

Our pending trip for tomorrow is something we're praying about. Not sure I want to waste the gas money if fishing isn't so good. It might be better to wait. We'll see.

For the meantime, I have to continue drooling over these pictures.

Happy Fishing!!
Robin

Rocket Recovery - Part 2
by Robin

We left of yesterday with the guys under water.





Recovering the top part (I think).












We have actually seen this in person in past shuttle launches. The reality & size of it all is very shocking.




The boat in the right (background) is the one I took the pic of last week at Port.


On the tracks which will deliver it back to Kennedy Space Center.


Hope you enjoyed this series.
Happy Fishing!!

ROCKET RECOVERY - Part 1
Photographer unknown, given to me by a church friend who works for USA contracts.








(Interrupt to tell you that his pictures were excellent but I couldn't figure out how to save them from a slideshow, so I had to take pics of the pics on the computer. Sorry for the lack of quality, but you get the idea of the process.)



Briefing the strategy of recovery.


Found them.


Lucky guys who get to dive around the booster.






Tying them up.




Join me tomorrow to see the next dozen pictures of recovery.
Happy Fishing & Spring Break.

CASTING COMPETITION in Melbourne, FL
4/4/09
by Robin



Today, was the casting competition. Sadly, only 7 people signed up in our entire county. My friends' kids and my two boys. When her 3 eldest heard there was no competition for them, they dropped out. That left 4 very cute kids.



Most all the kids knew how to cast overhand (over the shoulder) but none of them knew how to do a underhand toss. First, they had to learn how to do that.



Then, the challenge was to make the spoon (minus a hook - see white arrow below) land into one of the three hoola-hoops in the pond. Points were given for "close by", hitting the ring but not going in and going in (1, 2, 3 pts, respectively).



We even had a young lady angler in our presence. This girl is great. She can cook, garden, fish, loves animals, shoot pictures and knit, all with a ball cap & curly ponytail. Gee,... she's like a mini-me (except I crochet, not knit).



Her little brother.... well, what's not to love about those blonde curls? Not to mention that he can cast and finished 2nd place.



"My" girl finished 3rd.

Here is a pic of the boy that not only was birthed by me & spitting image of his father, but made it in the hoop with an overhand cast. Yeah! He had a couple near-misses as well.





Here's the group photo. Eddie is the County Extension Agt who headed up the competition. (Oh.. my youngest, in red, was 4th place but managed to weasel a 3rd place ribbon out of Mr. Eddie. I have no idea how he does that. I guess they felt guilty there were no Participation - green ribbons in the box.) My eldest got the 1st place blue, but they also handed him a Best in Division since he won over all age groups.