June 16-22
Vacation Time
This may not be complete if you take a gander at this, but you’ll be able to tell by the pics that will be posted below, I’m doing that last. First off, I am going by memory, so as opposed to writing daily, I’ll just give you what I recall. The reason I did not do this as a daily activity, is that you may remember my truck was stolen and didn’t want anyone really to know that we were gone. It would have been much easier and thorough to have posted daily, but this may be fun too.
We went to Florida, Indian Rocks Beach to be exact. We got a house there on the Bay (not Tampa, just not sure what it was called. Anyway, we drove the 12 hours to get there, wore out, but made a quick run to, you guessed it, Walmart. We needed food and some bait, just in case we couldn’t catch any in the cast net. We grabbed a pizza and headed back.
We did a little fishing that night catching more catfish that we wanted. On a previous trip, catfish had gotten to the point of being all that we were catching, we knew that we were going to have to change some things up a bit. We were tired anyhow and figured we’d do what we could the next day.
Now I am not sure which day the fishing began, but I had a pin fish on my rod with a bait alarm. Threw it out, let it sit against the rail and began baiting others hooks and piddling. All the sudden, the bait alarm goes off hard, rod bends, I grab and nothing on the other end. I just want to say that these fish had some sharp teeth, time to go to steel.
The daughter was loving throwing the cast net and let me say, this helps. She can back in the boat, throw the net, my guide days are coming to an end. Anyhow, things began to pick up, one rod bent and the line started screaming. My daughters friend had it and it was just running, then the wife hooked a nice one. We have a battle, the wife is reeling, I take the rod from Savannah as she said the reel is not working. fact is, the thing was huge. The girls get the wife’s in, it’s a spiny dogfish (shark). We switch out again and I help with the shark so wife can get a pic. I hand her the shark, then go back and get the other rod. This thing will run, then stop, then run, then stop and at no time can I turn this thing (I’m convinced it is a big stingray). As it runs toward the bank, I foresee into the future, it rubs the line on a dock down the bank and the line goes, never even turned it.
We hook up a few more nice ones but we end up losing a lot. The next night has some similarities, as two rods go at once and it included a nice black tip shark. At one point, the girls were fighting what I thought was a shark from a flash on the side, then they turned it and low and behold it was a big cobia, I’m guessing here at 2.5-3′, may have been keeper size. They brought it to the dock, it wrapped around out bait keeper, then rubbed the line on the post and snap, supper just swam away.
We had two phenomenal nights on the dock and even caught some during the day. Things slowed but even during slow times you can catch catfish or pinfish, there was always a bite.
We hit the surf on the last night with bites every cast. However, all that seemed to be there was catfish. It was an awesome trip and I could not do it justice in a write up. We had a ball, ended up catching more than we thought and fought some beast that got away. Good times and sorry the write up isn’t more, I really need to do this as it happens. The best part is the girls had a ball and the smiles and laughs were more valuable than any fish hooked. I hope everyone has a great week and hope I get to write up again soon. Have a great week and God bless.
