81.7 lb COBIA - Caught by a local boat.


http://forums.floridasportsman.com/forum/east-central-fishing-reports/817-lb-cobia-pc

Jetty Park Beach

http://www.cocoabeachsurf.com/BeachCam1.htm


I'm watching surf fishermen on the beach this morning. The kids and I were out there on Thursday. We didn't catch anything but a lot of sand in our car. LOL. Some old farts (ha ha) parked their 4 poles right next to me. Good grief people!!! There are miles of beach. Go somewhere else besides 20 ft to my right!! And to spit in my face, they were catching fish too. Little whiting and a sailcat because they were fishing much further out than I was. Jack was able to watch us from work while we fished.

I plan on fishing again next week. We're on SPRING BREAK!

(Sorry I forgot to take the camera for any beach pictures.)

HISTORY
by Robin

I forgot to share this with many of my family, but a month ago, we received a precious piece of Jack's history. We now have our first picture of Jack's paternal grandfather. His name was Arthur and he grew up in the Keys. His boat was in a boat slip next to the man on the right. The other man's grand-daughter sent our extended family the picture.

You see, fishing is in both Jack and my histories. I grew up fishing on the Great Lakes (region) with my Dad and Jack's grandfather was quite the fishermen too down in Tropic waters.

Below, you see him (left) with a Sawfish, but we heard rumored that he held a billfish record for a while. I would absolutely love to find confirmation of that.



Thanks for indulging me with a trip down Memory Lane.

LACK OF FISHING
by Robin

I feel like I've been really neglectful of filling this blog with great fishing pictures. This has been such a crazy winter for fishermen. Today would be a great day to fish,.... but some people have jobs. Ok, one of us has a job and the only one is sitting here studying surface temps, wind waves and predicting fishing forecasts.

I've seen 1 offshore report in weeks and the guy says the water temps are still very cold for cobia. The only cobes spotted were in the Gulf Stream with is 35 miles away. That's far. They're suppose to be on the beach.

So that leads me to ponder a couple things. Are they going to continue migrating north but far offshore or are they still south of us in large numbers? Are they migrating while staying on the bottom of the ocean and going to skip the entire season of sunbathing in March? Only God knows. There have been times in recent years where the kids were in the pool in mid-March for a quick dip on the warmer days. Today is the 24th and I saw my breath in the morning air. I'm wearing jeans & sweatshirts still. The water in my pool is still in the 50 deg mark. Will we actually ever move into Spring in Florida?

I nearly had Jack convinced of taking the boat out on Monday to just motor around the inlet and by the time we had our sandwiches packed, it clouded up and threatened to rain on us.

So, instead, we had Snapper for lunch. (Grilled squash on the left)


I do hope that we may be able to fish next weekend. Saturday is good but Jack is working. Will the weather hold until Monday? We will see.

Happy Fishing!!

Harry S. Truman - Grouper Fishing

I love the nice red grouper on the line but the military helmet/hat makes me laugh. Ok, so does the informality of him, our President, photographed shirtless. They don't take pictures like that any more.

On the homefront, winds have been high all week, but if we still have a west wind and lower winds, we may still try to get out & down the beach to see if we can spot any cobia. It's been pitiful that there are no fishing reports posted in our area and men are chomping at the bit to go fishing. It's been at least a good 6 wks of wind & waves.

Happy Fishing!

SNOOKERED
by Robin

I totally lost my mind!! I have fish pictures to share. About 2-3 wks ago, Jack and I went down to the docks to see what the fishermen were bringing in. We didn't see much action from the head boats but we did happen to see probably 20 snook hanging out below a pier.




Snook are being protected right now since so many of them died during our deep freezes in January.




Fish always know when you can't touch them. They seem to be laughing right at you and saying, "Na na na na boo- boo."




Happy Fishing (but don't keep a snook!)

PORT CANAVERAL - WINDY & Sea Temps 68 deg!!
by Robin

We've had nothing but 3- 10 ft seas for weeks. I'd sure love a break in the weather in order to get out there and look for cobia this year.

Meanwhile, Jack has been keeping himself busy out in the garage with little boat projects to pass the time.

Meet our boat's alternator....



Here are our guys taking it apart. Jack likes to teach our son how things work mechanically. I hope he can change my oil one day when I'm very old & gray.



Anyhow, here is our eldest demonstrating what they were looking for. Brushes. It doesn't look very brush like at all. But, it is. Jack was very happy with how much "life" it had left and put the alternator back together. (Aww, I just noticed my big gas-guzzling suburban is in the background. Love that truck.)



The next weekend, he worked on painting touch-ups on the hull. He also took off the front bunk that has been falling apart. Yes, on a 1- yr old trailer. It's our bad. I guess we put too much pressure on it with loading the boat back onto the trailer. I'm still getting used to where we want to sink the trailer for loading & unloading.



I'm really hoping that I'm going to have some big fish pictures on here very soon. I'm very ready to fish. I've even been working weights & exercising more to build up my stamina.

Happy Fishing!

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/saltwater/news/story?id=4975762

Culled out
Public input period for federal fishery strategy has ended

This is a column from Robert Montgomery for ESPN Outdoors. As a Senior Writer for BASS Publications, Montgomery has written about conservation, environment, and access issues for more than two decades. It's part of a series of articles from Montgomery on the issue.


The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

AP/Luis M. AlvarezOne sign at the United We Fish rally at the Capital summed up the feelings of recreational and commercial fishermen. This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is "fluid" and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn't issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.
That's a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

"When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to end one of the best scientifically managed big game hunts in North America (spring bear), the results of their agenda had severe economic impacts on small family businesses and the tourism economy of communities across northern and central Ontario," said Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano.

"Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored.

"In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President's concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority."

Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for "marine spatial planning" by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.
Led by NOAA's Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening.

Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June.

As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled "Transition Green" shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.

Then in late summer, just after he created the task force, these groups produced "Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy." This document makes repeated references to "overfishing," but doesn't once reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.

Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with "facts," in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource, has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling industry.

As more evidence of collusion, the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force's recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February. Fishing advocates had no idea that this was coming.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the New York Times reported on Feb. 12 that "President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities."

Morlock fears that "what we're seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There's no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.
"Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It's all just an excuse to put us off the water."

In the wake of the task force's framework document, the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation (CSF) and its partners in the U.S. Recreational Fishing & Boating Coalition against voiced their concerns to the administration.

"Some of the potential policy implications of this interim framework have the potential to be a real threat to recreational anglers who not only contribute billions of dollars to the economy and millions of dollars in tax revenues to support fisheries conservation, but who are also the backbone of the American fish and wildlife conservation ethic," said CSF President Jeff Crane.
Morlock, a member of the CSF board, added, "There are over one million jobs in America supported coast to coast by recreational fishing. The task force has not included any accountability requirements in their reports for evaluating or mitigating how the new policies they are drafting will impact the fishing industry or related economies.

"Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the omission of economic considerations is inexcusable."
This is not the only access issue threatening the public's right to fish, but it definitely is the most serious, according to Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS.
"With what's being created, the same principles could apply inland as apply to the oceans," he said. "Under the guise of 'marine spatial planning' entire watersheds could be shut down, even 2,000 miles up a river drainage from the ocean.

"Every angler needs to be aware because if it's not happening in your backyard today or tomorrow, it will be eventually.
"We have one of the largest voting blocks in the country and we need to use it. We must not sit idly by."

This is an opinion column from Robert Montgomery. As a Senior Writer for BASS Publications, Montgomery has written about conservation, environment, and access issues for more than two decades.

The waves have been upward to 8 ft this week and will continue to be 3-4 ft into the weekend. I have found myself singing and this song stood out to me, as I learn to be patient with the weather. - Robin


Be Still, My Soul
Katharina von Schlegel, 1752


Be still, my soul: the Lord is on your side. Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain; leave to your God to order and provide; in every change God faithful will remain. Be still, my soul: your best, your heavenly friend through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: your God will undertake to guide the future, as in ages past. Your hope, your confidence let nothing shake; all now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know the Christ who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on when we shall be forever with the Lord, when disappointment, grief, and fear are gone, sorrow for forgot, love's purest joys restored. Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past, all safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Just Shy a Year Ago.......




We came across this huge pod of dolphins (fills the entire photo). They enjoyed visiting with us & riding the bow of the boat.

It was also our first trip offshore with my newer camera.

This year, the weather is so much colder that I'm afraid many migrating species are most likely going to be delayed. The offshore waters are so much colder this year.