5-8-11 Fishing Trip

Just another day on the water! We didnt catch a bunch of fish, but it was a beautiful day. One fish had spit up a bunch of minnows he had eatin, so I collected them all to take a picture :-) We saw a huge sea turtle too!

King of the Inlet Tournament 4-16-11

This tournament was the first of the King of the Inlet tournament series. There are a total of 3. Tiny, Jason, Chris and Mike fished with us on this trip. The seas were rough! 3-5 feet and VERY choppy! We heard a lot of other boats were too scared to fight the seas, so they went straight east...not us though! :-) It was a very slow day. Ron went fishing a few days prior and caught 16/17 dolphin. After all the wind we got on Friday though, it moved the fish somewhere else. Our biggest fish weighed 20 pounds on the nose. Third place was 17.4. We aren't too happy because when we weighed the fish in, they said it weighed 17 pounds. We know our scale is accurate since we used it last weekend before we weighed our fish in and it matched the weigh masters scale, perfectly. Usually, you can see what your weight is too. This time, they didn't show us our weight, they just announced it. Either their scale is way off or the person weighing the fish is buddies with the team in third place and trying to protect them from getting kicked off the board. We are just going to have to really watch them over the next two tournaments and make them show us the weight. This could really effect us at the end of the series though since you receive points for where you place. We had a great team fishing with us and looking forward to our next tournament!

Fishing Tournament 4-9-11

Sorry I am just now getting around to posting these! This was our first fishing trip of the season. Tiny and Mike fished with us. It was a beautiful day on the water! It was a very slow fishing day for all the boats but we were in a spot that looked perfect for catching a winner! We caught a few dolphin and unfortunately lost the winning fish! We NEVER lose fish...so needless to say we were all pretty grumpy when we saw how much the first place fish weighed. The one we lost weighed about 25 pounds and first place weighed 19/20 pounds I think.

First Trip of the Season!!! 3-19-11

This was our first fishing trip of the season and I have to say, its one that I will remember forever! It was just me, Ron and my dad. This was the first time my dad got to go fishing with us. We weren't expecting to catch much, as the water was still a little too cold and no one else had really been catching anything thus far. We went almost all morning without catching anything and then my dad caught a huge Amber Jack! These types of fish are usually not caught when trolling. Both Ron and my dad were shocked we caught one! We then decided to head out to deeper waters, where it was a little warmer, and that's when the action started happening! We had four lines go off back to back! While I was reeling in the first one, another line went off; so, my dad jumped on that one. Whats funny is that I wanted my dad to get the first line, but he insisted that I take it since he had already reeled in a fish that morning. He didn't know what he was getting himself into by doing that! :-) The line he ended up getting had about a 50 pound Dolphin (Bull) on the other end of it! The fish didn't look that big when he first jumped out of the water and then he got bigger and bigger the closer he got! I reeled in mine and then two more lines went off. So I grabbed another and Ron grabbed the other. We got ours in and then I jumped behind the wheel to help my dad out a little. This fish had taken most of the line out and had no intentions of giving up anytime soon. I angled the boat towards the fish so my dad could crank down on him. It took an hour to reel this monster in! Ron helped refuel my dad with some beer to help get the fish in. It was a huge relief when Ron gaffed the fish and got him in the boat. That fish still had plenty of fight in him!!!

We could have easily caught more fish had we had more lines out and more people to reel them in. We were very happy with the fish we caught though! While we were trolling heading towards home, a familiar friend came to pay me a visit! A little Marlin Bird! If you look back to my older posts, you can see where one landed on my finger and hung out with me for a little bit.

This bird really liked me though! He wasn't too sure about me at first, so he started out by taking a rest on our down rigger. Then he slowly worked his way towards me and sat under me in the drivers seat. He nestled up in Ron's sweater and rested a little more. Poor guy must have been flying forever with no where to land and take a break. I was hoping he would stay with us on our trip back to land so he could rest and not be stuck out at sea.

He ended up flying down into our cabin and found a comfy spot on my dad's fishing bag and on Ron's tackle box. He rode with us all the way back to shore!!! On our way back in, we stopped to try and catch some Cobia swimming around a massive amount of bat rays. It was impossible to catch them though as the lines were getting snagged on the bat rays. We saw a huge Sunfish too! I had never seen one before...very odd looking I might say!

We continued on our journey home (about a two hour ride in total). When we were cruising down the canal to the boat ramp, I went down to the cabin to check on my bird and he was sleeping :-) I tried to get him to jump on my finger so I could take him outside and let him see he was near land, but he decided that my head was a better spot to sit on! I walked with him outside and he enjoyed the view from there for a few minutes. Then he went back into the cabin. Guess he liked it there! He didn't fly away until we were putting the boat on the trailer. I will surely miss my friend and happy I could help him to shore!