DIVING & TROLLING
by Robin

On Tues, 5/17/11, Jack and his coworker Chuck and Chuck's son, Adam decided to play in the ocean. Jack used to dive a LOT years ago but has given that up due to his sinuses not cooperating. About once a year, Chuck joins us on our boat for a fishing trip and we always do well.

Of course, it didn't hurt that they were wanting to hunt flounder and it is a fine white meat. It's up there in my top 5 or so list of fish to eat.

Jack headed out early and they first stopped at Damacles wreck. Chuck and Adam dove in. Vis was 10-15 ft. They shot 2 flounder on the first drop.



While they were resting, Jack rode out to 130 ft and set his first trolling line out. He didn't even get a 2nd line in the water when the first line screamed. Apparently, this bull made 6-10 ft leaps out of the water and crashed hard on its side. It went bonkers. After Jack reeled him back in a 3rd time, Chuck went to gaff and missed (it happens....) and the bull took off a 4th time. Nuts. The 2nd gaff was the charm and he went on the deck floor. (It ended up weighing 30 lbs at the dock scale.)

Now, here lies the problem. They brought the small cooler to stack flounder in. I told him at 5:45 am that he should bring the big cooler. I'm sure he was kicking himself without me saying, "I told you so." LOL. Oh and not to mention, this is the cooler with the broken lid.

With much arrangement of fish & ice, Jack manages to contort the mahi into the cooler and Adam ties the lid to the base with the dock lines. I'm sure it looked funny. I think this is why Jack doesn't take a camera on his fishing trips.



Ok, so they continue trolling another hour and get nothing. Back to diving.

They head to the Lead Wreck. As Chuck says, "It was a perfect drop right onto the wreck." Vis was closer to 20 ft in spots. Thermocline was still there. Adam shot one flounder that was sitting on another flounder (stacked like pancakes). It caused my underwater excitement as they tried to string them up without the lower one swimming away. Jack said he saw lots of air bubbles and next, a bag of air holding 4 flounder comes to the surface. How cool is that??

So, it was a great day for the guys. Even after splitting the meat, we froze back several bags of fish dinners, plus had yummy flounder sandwiches on Wednesday.





While cleaning fish at the fish tables (at marina), they would throw over bones & skin. Here is a picture of a sea turtle that grabbed the tail of the mahi.





Jack is offshore today with Jeff. They were going back for more mahi in 130 ft. I believe he said something about a nice bunch of weeds developing out there.

I think my turn comes on Friday, if Jack has any energy leftover. I want to do some easy tripletail hunting since the water is suppose to be flat. I'd love to get up at the crack of dawn and look for rolling tarpon, but I don't think Jack will be so easy to wake after all day offshore today. ha ha.

God bless & Happy Fishing,
Robin

SHUTTLE LAUNCH & FLOUNDER
by Robin

This morning, we went into the river to watch Endeavour launch for its final time. For the full story, please check over at Raising Fishermen blog for more pictures & the full story. www.raisingfishermen.blogspot.com









Also, tomorrow, Jack and some friends are going diving for flounder. I can't wait to report back what all they saw & caught.

MOTHER'S DAY in the RIVER
by Robin





We thought we may have a nice day in the river, catching crabs for a low-country crab boil. Boy, were we wrong. Not a single crab!!

But, Jack saved the day with this very delicious spotted seatrout. Seatrout have to be between 15-20", but you can keep 1 over 20". I think this one was approx 17". Nice little fight, as it went towards those pilings.



The boys kept working their nets and pulling in these mini-conchs. When they first told me they were catching conch, I screamed, "Keep it!" because I desperately wanted to try my conch recipe again. Then, it was shown to me and Jack explained something about regulations. Oh well. A girl can think big, right?



We brought in 4 puffer fish (& released).



And we got to see wonderful displays of dolphin in this small cove. I just missed the jump here.



The mamas seem to enjoy raising their babies here.



The dolphin & pelican have a cool symbiotic relationship and follow each other around. The dolphins will drive the mullet to the surface to jump and the pelicans eat without much work.



I think that sometimes the dolphin don't get as much out of the relationship as the pelicans.



Then, we headed back through the locks towards our new marina 'home'.



Here's a little bit of free information for you if you go through the locks. Don't tie your boat up tight to the side railings. The water level changes!!! Let's say that God provides us challenges as learning opportunities. ha ha.

Anyhow, I always keep my camera handy for the locks because we always see something cool swimming through there with us. We had multiple manatees the first time. Nothing on the way back home. Oh!! except for one when we first were pulling up and I was working the back lines. One popped up 3 feet from my nose and scared the bejeebers out of me. It was like Jurassic Park of the toothless, slow & fat variety. Everybody got a good kick out of my scare. I'm glad nobody had a camera on me!

Happy Fishing! On Saturday, Jack starts his long vacation where we'll be fishing as often as our energy holds out. I CAN'T WAIT!!!

96 Rock and Ladies Tournament
by Robin

Port Canaveral is having 2 tournaments on the same day. One is a very small one to honor ladies on Mother's Day weekend and the other is a jungle of men charged with lots of testosterone and horsepower. (Think Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor w/ fishing as his hobby)




The Ladies have to pay entry fees for registering the boat; but, for the men, theirs is free. Does anybody else see the irony of this on a Mother's Day weekend??

Jack and I, along with our good friends who have a nice sportfishing boat, are all registered and ready to go for the tournaments. May God bless the best fishermen!

Happy Fishing! Beautiful weather lately.

5/1/11 NEW HOME!!!
by Robin

Most the time, our boat stays at our house and is parked in the yard; but, it is near time for vacation (AKA Mahi season) and more frequent boating. Jack thought it would be great to treat ourselves to a couple months of keeping the boat at the marina.

Quite honestly, every since we were in the accident, hauling the boat to the marina, I've been scared to tow it. I think Jack knows that although he's never made me feel bad for it.

See her in the channel??


Plus, like he said, while we've got lots of vacation time this month, it is nicer to not have the burden of loading & unloading the thing. The marina we picked out is convenient, reasonably price and they put in an inground pool last week. While we're at the marina, the boys can jump in the pool to quickly refresh after the day's heat. I'm liking that idea too. Being in the salty environment can make you feel so dirty...er... salty.

(Coming down the center)


Jack is trying to talk me into keeping the boat out there permanently, but we'll how good he is of convincing me on that!

NEAR SHORE - 4.11.11 Part 2
by Robin

I left off this morning saying we were approx 7-10 miles north of the Port Canaveral entrance and headed south, looking for manta rays or free-swimming cobia.



I was so excited to see this beauty no long after we turned south.



She wasn't extemely large for a manta but she was just sunbathing herself with no where to go. Unfortunately for us cobia hunters, there were NO cobia on her back.

We no sooner began to head south again and we spotted a free swimmer. Nice size cobia. BUT, this guy was not hungry no matter what we threw at him. Pink jigs, yellow jigs, squid, live shrimp.....





He pretty much tortured us by swimming right next to the boat and moving along without a care in the world. (See him, right by my youngest's right elbow?)



My eldest son suggested we just gaff him, which sounds good in theory but probably would not work on a green fish. Later that night, I suggested that Jack buy a harpoon so we won't miss on great fish like this. "Ahhh. NO." Was his answer.

We came up over a shoal (it jumps from like 20-25 ft to 6 ft). I loved the light color water as I looked for cobes. I think Jack feared more running aground. Anyhow, I could see thousands of fish that appeared & disappeared like ghosts. I thought they were blues but insisted Jack let the kids cast a shrimp to them. We took a turn playing with little blues. (Gotta keep the kids interested.)



From there, we were very close approximity to a set of buoys. We looked over there but nothing was hanging around the top. However, we noticed that to the east of them, there was a fleet of boats. So, before we barely got that way, we came across approx 6 free swimming cobia all by themselves. Woo hoo!

Jack's 1st cast. Not good. Jack's 2nd cast pulled one off from the group. He was hungry but caught a glimpse of the boat and took off. Next thing I know, these gentlemen speed over to us, cast and hook up.



That was so nice of them, wasn't it? Jack yelled at them, which in turn my 11 yr old yelled the same thing. Quality family bonding.



I took this picture and then guy without a shirt turns around to us, yelling, "You overshot the fish." Not exactly true. We drifted away and were going to reposition. It happens all the time.

Well, it was a great Christian challenge to not think murderous thoughts and hate this man as we watched him gaff his cobia and then high-tail it back to shore. I was preaching to the choir when I was telling the kids not to worry and we'd find our own fish.

The next 30 minutes, there are no pics because I had a pole in hand and took several casts at a bait pod. I could see it was holding predators but couldn't make out much of anything. At one point, I'm pretty certain I saw a tarpon roll. I didn't care if I caught a tarpon because it is on my list of species I haven't caught yet.

So, I'm jigging a bit off the bait pod and I saw a 25-30 lb cobia grab my jig and run with it. Yahoo! Game on. Then, 15 seconds later, game over. That's how fishing goes. I was on a light pole and didn't get the hook set in his mouth. Jack said that he saw the silver flash about that same time, so who knows what happened below. I know I saw a cobia take my yellow & red jig at the surface.

Anyhow, we saw a few more cobia (10 all day) but they were very spooked by 5pm and a crowd of boats around them.



So, overall, very good day with keeping the kids interested in fishing and seeing cool stuff. Yet, I pout over the ones that got away. I wish I wasn't that way, but honestly, I am.

Last night, Jack fixed us one very expensive dinner of mahi fish stix. We'll catch a freezer full next time.
Happy Fishing,
Robin

OFFSHORE 4.11.11 - Part 1

We did not get up pre-dawn and trip over ourselves to get out there early. I'm thinking this is about 7:30 when we were getting bait from Fisherman's World. Then, we bought gas (non-ethanol) at Cape Marina before heading offshore.



Very quickly, we came across scum lines forming. I'm not an expert but I'm going to guess that a lot of this is some type of algea bloom or something similar getting stuck between 2 bodies of water, that form what we call, a "rip".



It's smart to look over the rip for signs of life.



As we motored around, we saw something odd in the distance. Upon arrival to see what it was, we realized it was 2 sea turtles.... making eggs. Ah-hem... a little privacy here, please!!!



We saw tons and tons of turtles. This is another one who spooked very quickly.

Jack set out trolling lines about 125 ft. Water cleaned up nice about 115 ft, saw flying fish and some scattered weeds.

134 ft, game on. That didn't take long. I had seen a big mahi underwater earlier and then saw a littler one chasing a remora. Of course, it wasn't the big one that bit.



This is a perfect size one for our eldest to reel in.



On the ice, it goes. Not big, but it makes for dinner.



We continued trolling at saw another turtle - different species. I'm thinking this is a loggerhead but it's hard for me to tell w/ all the barnacles.



We saw a large 6 ft shark. I left this picture uncropped because I want you to note the vast empty sea. No bait on top. Very little to go by for finding fish.



We decided to cut our losses early and head back towards shore for some cobia & manta ray hunting. Approx 78 ft of water, still pretty north of the port, we came across a nice little weedline. Our first patch of weeds has small mahi on it. We call them peanuts.



Look at him jump!





Double-hook-up. Not a keeper in the bunch. All of them were 18-19 inches, but it sure was fun for the kids.





Keeping Dad busy.







I even got to catch a couple. Gotta get some casting practice in.



From here, we ran fast into the northside of the cape. That will have to be in the next post. (Time for breakfast.)

We have cobia & manta ray pictures!
Happy Fishing,
Robin

MANTA RAY VIDEO and PICTURES

Brought to you by Robin

We haven't been out fishing in a couple weeks, as Jack is recovering from being close to having pneumonia. So, we are living vicariously through other folks fishing trips this spring. We have planned to take lots of vacation in May to fish.

This all works well for me since the kids and I are in our final month of schooling and we do our nationalize testing at the end of the month.

Below, is a picture of manta ray breaching the water. Rays love to do sommersaults and flips. The photo was taken by Tim Altman, who is a very successful Captain for Fin Freak Offshore Charters. http://www.finfreak.com/



Next is a cool video off the Port Canaveral waters from a fisherman who came across a large school of manta rays. They were successful in catching several cobia that swam with the rays.



Today, the seas are picture perfect. I expect a lot of good fishing reports over the weekend. We will be busy with a couple things. Our son's AWANA Grand Prix derby car runs Sunday afternoon. Maybe Monday, if the weather holds, we'll get out and grab a cobia for ourselves.

Happy Fishing!!