TARPON FISHING - 7/27/10
by Robin

Up at 4:30am, in the car at 5:30 am, leaving the docks at 6:20 with sprinkles of rain on our heads. Jack had to use his boat lights, which seemed so nice.

We cleared the mouth of the port just in time to watch the sun rise over the horizon. Unfortunately, a big rain cloud blocked our view. Well, I say unfortunately, but it turned out to be a good thing because the rain stopped quickly and left us with cool air.



To our west, the moon was still hanging in the sky. It hadn't return to it's slumber yet.


We searched the "Bight", north of the port for a mile or so and saw no bait or big fish. We did a 180 and headed south.



Southeast, there was more rain with some lightening. Oh, it was gorgeous. Dark rain at the bottom with a burst of morning light at the top.

A few minutes later, I saw a beautiful mirror of sky and sea behind me. So, I snapped this picture. Again, rain below and glory above!


An hour later, the sun was still stuck behind the clouds but the rain was far, far off in the distance. I swore I could see one cloud cast a shadow on another cloud. I could have reached out and touched the finger of God with landscape views like this!!


I've got to run, but tomorrow, I'll post up the fishing part of our morning.
God bless America and YOU!
Happy Fishing,
Robin

TARPON fishing!
by Robin

It looks like we may get our first opportunity to go Tarpon fishing Tuesday. I'm very excited. You don't keep Tarpon, but they are an exciting gamefish. They're the aerobatic giants of the shallows or inshore water.

A few years back, we happened upon a school of tarpon but didn't know a thing about catching them. It was quite a site to see large fish rolling & boiling up the waters around you. Every since that day, it has been one of those fish I'd like to check off my to-do list.

There is a good chance of catching sharks as well. I've heard they're plentiful in the same waters we're heading to. They're probably feeding off the same bait.

Anyhow, Tomorrow has a west wind, 5 knots, seas 1-2 ft with a dominant period of 10 seconds. This should make some awesome tarpon fishing waters!

(Images provided by Google search engine.)

As you can see from the image on the right, lady anglers can also enjoy the sport from this giants. Fly-fishermen find them to be great action on their fly rods as well. I'm guessing the fish on the right is well over 100 lbs.

Happy Fishing!!

WHALE WATCHER GET A CRASH VISIT!!
by Robin

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100722/od_yblog_upshot/whale-watchers-recount-bizarre-yacht-jump

From The Today Show:





I can totally sympathize with this story. (Forgive the awful quality scan)



We had been observing a whale, drifted too close (illegally close - don't do this!!) and then she came over to see us and gave me a harrowing minute, myself. There's nothing you can do but hope the whale doesn't spook and it goes away without causing damage to you, them or the boat.

Legal Disclaimer: The whale in the National story is a S. Right whale. The whale in our story is a N. Right whale, which is a protected, endangered species. The law states that you must stay 500 yds AWAY from them. If not, you can expect a visit from NOAA-NMFS like we did. Penalty for this ranges from $20K - $50K.

God bless!
Robin

JOB's SURE KNOWLEDGE

Sept 10, 1876

by Charles Spurgeon

I've been studying the Book of Job this past month and I'm in Chapter 19 when I came across this very old sermon by the great Charles Spurgeon. What a great analogy to go on this Christian fisherman's blog.

"There may be some rough water to be crossed between here and the fair havens of eternal felicity, but all is right there for ever and ever.

There may be losses and crosses, there may be tossings and shipwrecks, but all is right for ever with all who are in Christ Jesus. "Some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship,"—but all who are in Christ Jesus shall escape "safe to land."

There are uncertainties innumerable, but there is this one certainty: "Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end." Spring on this rock, man!

If you are struggling in the sea, just now, and waves of sin and doubt beat over you, leap on to this rock, Jesus lives.

FULL SERMON HERE

John 7:38

He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”






(Our new pool toy)

KINGFISH DIP!!!
by Robin

It's that time of year again! If you're looking for great recipes, feel free to try the links at the bottom right corner of my page. Our recipe is similar, but different. It's secret because it's so good, we may just have to market this.

First off, we were blessed to get all this kingfish meat from a friend. As you can tell from the regular size scissors, it was one huge king. I'm guessing there is 25 lbs of meat in the below picture.



Set aside an entire day to slow-smoke your fish. One day, we hope to have a big daddy-type smoker, but for now, this one works. Our biggest downfall was that we had to do the process multiple times to get all the fish smoked. By bedtime, all the fish was done, bagged & cooling down in the frig for day 2.



Look how it puffed up! That's Mesquite smoke. Heat about 150-225 deg.


When it looks this great, take it off.


Here's Chef Jack (not a trained chef, but one at heart) with the tray of meat that we deboned together.


Not only is this a lot of meat (2 bowls worth), but LOOK at those ribs. Do you see those 4 spikes in the lower, center part of the picture? I can truly imagine that a long-time ago, Indians used these for something.


Here are some.... most (?) of the ingredients. Some things we didn't use. The spices & secret ingredients are not shown. We bought in mass quantities which made the grocery store folks laugh.


Skipping a few steps, but you can see the master at work.


White meat is gently folded into the mix.


We filled 17 small containers with dip.


Jack took bunches to work and the report is that it was inhaled before noon. He also took boxes of crackers with him.

This morning, I realized that we never smoked the 1 smaller pkg of meat, so we will be repeating all of this again soon.

Actually, we enjoy doing all this work. We love cooking together. The work goes by much quicker when we have each other's company. It is a big reward to gift people too.

Happy Fishing!
Robin

7/10/10 - S. PELICAN FLATS
by Robin

I'll keep this short & sweet since it being done through lunch. Jack took Saturday off from work because the weather was so beautiful. We were up at 5am, down to the port by 7am after filling up gas for a long while. I had forgotten how long the ramp lines were on the weekends, plus one ramp was damaged so nobody was using it.

We borrowed a friend's ledge - coordinates and anchored up perfect the 3rd try. Stayed out there 'til 1:50pm when we decided to pack it up because the heat was unbearable. We did use a chum bag for the first time. The jury is still out on how useful it was. We did ok fish-wise, but we also had 1 large shark at first, a good dozen remoras consistently off the back of the boat and 1 cobia that we couldn't catch because the remoras were eating bait before we could feed it to him. Our eldest hooked him up for a short while but he never did get the hook sunk perfectly. So sad.

Nice cooler shot.




Below is an image I grabbed off the internet. I caught a red porgy that was shy of the size limit so we threw it back. It was a first for us. I took pictures of our day but lost them all in a camera formatting issue (about to kill my camera). The only picture saved from that day was the cooler shot that I sent my mom & sister. Too bad.



Nice, smooth ride in. Saw a school of dozens of brown sting rays. Loaded up the boat easily considering the wind that was picking up.

6/29/10 - SURF FISHING at PLAYALINDA Beach
by Robin

I forced the boys out of bed at 7 am and out the door by 7:30. We took my grandfather's surf pole with us, along with various beach toys.

We arrived at the beach only to find very heavy haze, practically fog. Eeerie but absolutely cool. It was coming up on high tide with supposed 1-2 ft waves (more like a solid 2 ft+) and 87 deg temps, which felt more like 70 degs. The thermocline is hitting offshore and I believe it was showing itself on the Canaveral Nat'l Seashore this morning.



We made our way through the turtle nesting areas to a place where the boys could run around. Our church's playgroup was going to be joining us at 10:30am.



Here was my view, looking northbound.


I fished for hours with nary a bite. I used clams, fake crab, frozen & live sandfleas, frozen shrimp,... you name it. I got NOTHING.

But the boys...... they found a nice size crab to catch & observe.




After the friends all started to show up, I put up the pole until after many of them left again. The boys borrowed some boogie boards to ride in the surf.


This is NOT a beach to simply relax and not watch your kids. It is steep at high tide, so we waited until it was almost level at low tide before doing this.



We buried our friends, one by one.





By 3pm, we were one of the last 2 families there. Time to go home & cook dinner & get baths.

Look how the water color & clarity changed by afternoon!!!! Gorgeous day.





The view South at the top of the Barrier Ridge. Those are 2 of the launch pads for the shuttles.


Such an odd thing right in the middle of the Wildlife Refuge & beach.

Blog 2 down....... Hmmm.....

I think I'm going surf fishing on Friday again. Hopefully I'll catch a stinkin' fish this month. LOL

Happy Fishing!

6/14/10 - 8A Reef & HETZEL SHOALS
by Robin

Inspite the fact that nobody reads this and I'm totally uninspired by that, I'm still going to blog up our last 2 trips with poles in hand.

On June 14th, we headed offshore rather early, but not dawn. We brought the umbrella which only resulted in one poked face.



Caught bait on the 3rd buoy that we came upon. All buoys were holding barracuda which is normal for summer. You'd better get your bait in the boat fast before they come to eat it.





While running out to 8A, we ran past a bait pod that seemed a good acre in size. Hindsight was that we probably should have trolled the edges to see what was boiling them up to the surface. Probably would have caught some kingfish there, but didn't stick with it.

Found some nice rips & scattered weeds on 8A. Saw a couple small mahi mahi that didn't bite.



Spent a couple hours with only 1 knockdown, resulting in ZERO fish.

Motored to a new spot, called Hetzel Shoals. Supposedly it was holding cobia fish there. And it is STILL holding fat cobia there, but we didn't stick it out since it was new grounds. I know this looks like a picture of blue nothing, but we really could see slight formations on the bottom. According to other fishermen, you can see forms of large fish swimming around. That's when you drop the hook w/ bait down. Next time we go out, we'll probably head back and try it again. Dozens of fish are coming off of this area. One had a tag on it from Louisiana.



We went back to 8A and after some unsuccessful trolling, tried bottom fishing. We've never done that there before. A few black sea bass and a nice dolphin show was all we got.



The kids were so happy to hear we were headed back home by 2:30pm. Too much heat. No fish action. VBS that night. Sometimes you just need to cut your losses.



One down, one to go....