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?

REEL JIGS
by Robin


Do you get it?? This blog is about our new reels and jigs.



Jack has a new pink jig for cobia fishing, but usually we use a fluorescent yellow one. The white jig on the right is actually a glow-in-the-dark one. This is for fishing 100+ ft of water where the lights go out at the bottom. I'm going to be glowing like Area 51. LOL.

I thought I'd take pictures of Jack's new reels as he was putting everything together for Monday's trip. What a better time than now to get those pics of the new reels. No grains of salt on them yet. No squid ink. No fish guts. (Renee & Jeanne.....stop reading this. I won't responsible for making pregnant women puke.)




Anyhow, they're beautiful. At least to me they are. Or maybe I'm more impressed that I was about 15 ft away when I took these pics. (Sharie, these are straight out of the camera perfecto!)



I am LOVING the new zoom on the new camera.

Oh and before I hit "publish", I would be bad if I didn't admit that we did a recheck & did repacking of our Abandon ship bag in light of what happened last week with 3 of the 4 NFL/football players being lost in the Gulf. Two of our GPS & VHS radio had dead batteries. Good thing we checked!! Jack tested the EPIRB and radio, plus reuploaded position for the GPS with fresh batteries.



I refrained last week mentioning anything about the men lost at sea for their families' sakes. Something like this hits all of the fishing community hard. I think it is because we all realize it could be one of us. However, I can't help but wonder, with all that money they make, why they didn't all have personal EPIRB (emerg personal beacons) with or on them? It would have saved their lives. Ours narrows our location, after getting wet or being manually discharged, and sends an emergency message to the Coast Guard in 15 minutes!! Yes, 15 minutes. It still may take half a day to be located & rescued but at least that beats hypothermia, exposure or shark attack over longer periods of time.

I won't stay on any soapbox but let's just say it scared us enough to repack our bag. My heart goes out to the family members of those football players.

Happy Fishing!! I'll be back tomorrow with a Fishing Report!
Robin

TIME TO FISH AGAIN!!!

by Robin

Keep your fingers & toes crossed while praying to God that we'll be offshore fishing on Monday. It looks very, very promising.

The sea surface temps are rising up to 68 deg and the winds have died down.

(Ack... I'm beside myself.)

While looking up cobia images, I found two guys who love to fish off Kuwait for cobia. How cool is that?

Happy Fishing y'all. A bunch of fishing reports will come in tonight (Sat) but regardless of cobia or not, we're still going. We may even pick up some snapper before they get closed from us.

SAVING OYSTERS - one mat at a time.
by Robin

Friday happened to be a day of tying up loose ends with bookwork and heading outside for our classroom. It was a gorgeous day to do community service. Today, it happened to be making oyster mats because oyster "babies" need to fall onto something hard in order to grow. Unlike scallops and clams which move about individually, oysters grow in clusters.

In our local area, I guess our oysters are needing a little assistance so that's where we step in to provide the micro-babies a place to fall onto and "cluster".

The oyster shells come from the backyard of some shucking building in St. Augustine. They got 8 buckets of these. I'm thinking we only went through 2 buckets at the most by the time we left.

The research team drills little holes in each shell.



Then, a bunch of us from the community, all homeschoolers here, listen to her presentation and begin working on the mats.


Here is our eldest with using the tie-wraps to secure the shells to the mat.


Here's my youngest. He's 9 and I must add that this is a skill that builds dexterity in your hands. It is hard to manipulate the ties, shells and mat all at the same time.


It's important to pull-down your tie-wraps.


Here is a finished one that was a demo mat.


Here is my eldest about half way through his mat. He's got a lot of gaps to fill in.


To see where we ran to after doing oyster mats, click here . It was our other community service project.

It looks as though Snapper fishing will be closed for 6 mo, starting as early as this fall. There will most likely be a follow-up closure of 182 days which would make it year-round.

You can kiss your red snapper dinners good-bye.

What in the world is going on with this country? Oh and they're going for mahi mahi next in the summer meeting. Mahi mahi are one of the fastest growing species out there in the ocean, but they still plan on targeting it next.

REVOLTING REPORT!!!!
by Robin

I'm reeling! (no pun intended) I've got rage. Raw emotions. I'm stunned.

If you've been following my blog the past month, you will know that I've posted a few times about the possible Snapper fishing ban and that I gave my testimony last month to the SAFMC about how snapper fishing has been coming back in recent years. Very few fishermen went fishing over last summer because prices were so high on gas. There has been very little fishing pressure the past 12 mo from the recreational fishermen.

There seems to be no reliable research that proves the fishery is in decline. If it were, wouldn't it make sense to close it down commercially as well, since they take about 95% of the fish and recreational fishermen only get about 5%???????

Anyhow, George Geiger, the one I spoke to, moved the ban from 4 months to 6 months this morning and it PASSED the interim rule 7-6 in favor of the ban.

They have moved into a full council mtg this afternoon to discuss and vote on it again. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. It's almost like somebody is getting paid under the table to close down fishing to the recreational fishermen and send the fish & money to the commercial folks. I've never seen a process so skewed and lacking in evidence, on the local level. It makes no sense.

If this outrages you, and it should, please take a few minutes to fill out the below form to fight the Grouper and Golden Tilefish legislative changes as well.

GROUPER - deadline is Mon the 9th.
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=SubmitComment&o=09000064808487e3

Fill out the form and express you objections to these new regs Summary table of current and proposed regulations for the South Atlantic. Grouper aggregate bag limit Now - 5 fish Amendment 16 - 3 fish Gag/black grouper bag limit within grouper aggregate Now - 2 gag or black grouper (combined) Amendment 16 - 1 gag or black Vermilion snapper bag limit Now - 10 fish Amendment 16 - 5 fish Shallow-water grouper* closed season Now - none Amendment 16 - January - April Vermilion snapper closed season Now- none Amendment 16 - November - March

GOLDEN TILEFISH - deadline 3/23
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=SubmitComment&o=090000648086123a
This fishery is divided up 98% commercial and 2% recreational. Even if you don't fish this species (including me), you should still voice your concern that access to these fish should be fair and equitable for recreational & commercial alike.

Gee, wish I could post "Happy Fishing", but I'm a little mad at this point.

Edited: Before I could even finish the report, word came in the Georgia supported the closure.

SHOULD I BE INSULTED?? or HONORED??
by Robin

I keep a sitemeter on this site and I've been having a lot more traffic than normal. It seems that somebody from g oooo gle (put it together) has decided to make my website a reference website for anybody looking up fishing gear. This coming off the heels of my "arsenal" blog a couple months ago.

I also happen to be a reference website for boat restoration pictures.

Funny thing, many of my hits are coming from International countries which makes for a great geography lesson for the kids and myself. I had no idea that people from India or Sweden would care about my handful of poles & reels out in the garage. Gee. If I had known it would become a hit for people searching, I might have tried a little harder on my photography.

Happy Fishing y'all!!!

WE'RE ALL WAITING!!!!!!!!!!
by Robin

Think this..... hundreds, if not thousands of fishermen, geared up, gassed up, waiting with baited breath for the first break in warm weather and the sea surface temps climb to 68, then 69 and round over the 70 degree mark.

I can hear the sounds of engines revving up, only they aren't NASCAR engines from Daytona beach. They're Mercuries, Johnsons, Yamahas, Evinrudes and Suzukis from Port Canaveral. And their objective is not to hit their max speeds of 50+ mph to head offshore but rather to putter around the inshore grounds at a snail's pace looking for cobia.



I'm sure that it must look mighty funny from God's perspective (photos taken today). Maybe it would look like boats looking for a needle in a haystack. Sometimes, it feels like from water level too. But then, your eyes latch onto something brown on the surface. You signal to the Captain to speed over that way before the guy in the boat next to you gets to him first.

Somebody makes that first cast and grabs the attention of the brown beast. Hearts are a'pounding. First of the season jitters may mess up your cast (or at least they do with me). And if you tease him enough, he gives a burst of speed toward your jig and takes it down with the last glimps of his tail. You set the hook and the weight is there. He's hooked. What an adrenalin rush for you and for him. He feels the resistance and he's on a dash to anywhere but onto your boat.

Yes, this is what we're all waiting for. I'm waiting for the temps to rise, like this anole lizard.



Waiting for the azaleas to be in full bloom. (I love how this bloom on the left looks like praying hands.)




Waiting for orange blossom scent to fill the air.



Folks, it's almost here. Can you hardly believe it? I'll be back in business for fish pictures again. Oh, thank you Lord. I cannot wait to be out there fishing once again.

SEAFOOD FESTIVAL - Surf & Turf, Day 2
by Robin

Not to bore you with more of the same pics, but essentially, day 2 was cold crab leg meat, cold red & rock shrimp. So, I decided to add a little turf to our surf meal.

My Dad is a fantastic steak griller so Jack handed the grill over to him. I have many fond childhood memories of my Dad at the grill and the smell of good steak filling the air. Look at these babies!!
Yum.


And for me, who tries her best not to take in high volumes of red meat protein, I had a wonderful salad on the size. I decided to spruce it up a bit by getting a colorful mixture. Sometimes Iceberg and Romaine are boring to me..........



I topped it with Paula Deen's Blackberry/Walnut vinaigrette that Mom brought with her from Savannah. Very nice change up for me.

Oh, oh, oh..... I'm almost forgetting my other "veggie" for the day. Onion rings!! (That does qualify for a vegetable, right?) Anyhow, I bought prepackaged, battered rings in bulk and made a couple batches in the "Cool Daddy" fryer. Oh My... Heaven....on earth.... Add a little Cape Code's Chipolte dressing/dipping sauce and you've got yourself a homemade version of a Blooming Onion. It has a little Asiago cheese in there, but it bad, bad, bad for me, but....... it was worth the pain in my unhappy joints (I have fibromyalgia controlled by diet - no dairy, little to no meat).

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed seeing the seafood pics. Jack and I are ready to fish if we could only get the weather to cooperate with us. Many of the US had snow this weekend, so I guess I should be glad I only had wind and cold air. Sea Surface temps dropped back down in the low 60's. It may be another 2 weeks before the cobia get here on the surface.

Happy Fishing to anybody willing to brave the cold weather.