Well, it’s been quite the busy two weeks since the last post: between recouping from the CFOA tournament, heading up to the Florida Folk Festival and this last weekend’s FSFA club tournament festivities, I barely found time to get my tired ass on the water.
I’ll start off with the yearly migration to White Spring, FL for the 49th annual folk fest-- not to mention Cora’s first annual folk fest and, boy, was she excited. As usual, it was a great time with friends and family listening to music, watching golf carts racing by at the camp sites, eating amazing food, swimming, cooling down in the Suwannee River and, as always, enjoying a few late night antics. The thing to note this year was it was HOT. Even in the shade that covers the majority of Stephen Foster State Park, I was feeling the heat all weekend. But Cora did great and by heading inland on a Memorial Day weekend, we managed to avoid the cluster “F” of newly awakened hibernating summer boaters.
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On to the week leading up to the FSFA Offshore Slam tournament. I wasn’t thinking the short week would hold that much for me to do but keep an eye on the weather due to the fact that I hadn’t yet decided whether I would enter the tournament or not. But I had mentioned to John M, who was a tournament committee member, that I would lend a hand with any of the logistics that needed handling throughout the week. Dumb idea if you wanted a relaxing weekend. I ended up taking a load of stuff to John’s from the regular monthly meeting the next night. Then Blythe, Cora and I went to a “bucket packing party” to help adhere stickers from all the sponsors to the outsides of about 102 5-gallon buckets, customized with a new nylon rope handle. Then we added small goodies to each bucket via a makeshift assembly line. It was fine: a little pizza, some beers, and a good time with a bunch of people I didn’t know. Then came the Captains’ Meeting (in our club’s case, Party) on Friday night. I think CJ said we sold out of the 18 cases of beer we had in an hour and a half… yikes, sailors, yikes. With Blythe, and Cora once again in tow, we headed over as soon as I got home from work. I was given the task of helping out with the registration, getting captains registered for the tourney and giving them the sweet buckets of treasures we so tirelessly stuffed just a few days before. Blythe and Cora were tasked with selling raffle tickets for a kayak that was the grand prize giveaway at the end of the weigh-in on Saturday. After a while, Blythe headed home and I stuck around to man my post. I think the final tally of boats was just under 80.
At the captains’ meeting I still hadn’t committed to doing the tournament but I had my checkbook ready on standby just in case I had a lucky feeling, but I ended up thinking myself out of it. It went something like this, “Remember, self,” I said to myself, “gator tags are still available so if you spend all your play money on this tourney that you really don’t have a chance at, in weather that you have no business being out in, then you might not be able to try for the 2nd phase of gator tag which is first come first serve this Wednesday.” So me and myself stayed and helped clean up the gymnasium till relatively late into the night.
So since I wasn’t fishing Saturday, Blythe, Cora and I started the day by minivan shopping…mmmm…fun. After finishing with that and after a quick stop at the in-laws, I picked up a cooler of Bud Light with Lime and my lawn chair then I headed over to the weigh- in to see if me and my sweaty Volunteer shirt from the night before could lend a helping hand. I ended up helping bring the boats in, helping with the dock duties and getting the fish tagged, categorized and ready to weigh in for the majority of the afternoon. The port was a bit busy with the tourney and the Hot Rod Power Tour (car show) going on at the same time but it all worked out. Blythe, Cora and Holly came up to witness the carnival and have a beer while they weighed in the last few fish. They left shortly after the final results were confirmed, leaving me once again to help break down about 5 times the stuff as the night before with ½ the help. It was a good challenge and a tough break down after a long day in the hot sun. Got home pretty late Saturday night too and didn’t have much fishing in my near future in mind especially after my “quick detour” to Thirsty Bones (ultimately being picked up and driven home by Holly; thanks, Holly!) What? The pizza wasn’t ready yet, what was I supposed to do???? Ended up getting home around 9:50 pm, grubbing some Hungry Howie’s and apparently trying to convince Holly to take home one of our dogs…whatever, it was Blythe’s dog.
Back to the outdoor part, right!!! Now Sunday morning I got up and checked all the weather sites at around 0600 and it didn’t look TOOOOOOO bad. To my standards, at least. It was about 3 ft seas and an ENE wind at about 10-13 mph. It didn’t look like there was going to be a “good time or bad time” to hit it, so I cozied back in bed and slept for a while longer. I gave Adam a call once I decided to get moving and left a message letting him know that there is life outside of lawn work on the weekends and I began to load the boat. After a little while, he came to his senses and accepted the offer, an offer to possibly become adrift with me out at sea and possibly never have return to work again. We loaded the boat and rolled out of the driveway at around 1100 and after a quick stop at Wal-mart for a few essential items, we were on the water before we could say, “damn that wind looks like it’s kicking.” We didn’t really have a good plan, I kinda wanted to catch a kingfish but I wasn’t dead set on it. I had in mind just running to the lead wreck (straight east of the port about 14 miles) and fishing there for a little while and then calling it a day but once we crested the jetty, I knew that that plan was out. We decided to hit the buoys on the way out and the first one we came to was loaded with tripletail but with the wind and seas making it extremely difficult to stay in one place, or even get an accurate cast for that matter, we only caught one off the buoy and headed into the wind to the ENE. With Adam’s fish in the cooler we stuck with the buoy idea and went to R4 and eventually R2 with no success. From R2 we were about 12 miles out and straight south of the 8A reef, so we headed north to the reef to see if anything was home. The wind and seas were anything but favorable but we smashed through them and made it there, sore but alive. We started by doing a few drifts over the reef with live bait to try to pick up a kingfish but nothing. Then we decided to get some sea bass; since we were all the way out there, why not come home with our 5 each? So anchors away and sea bass, here we come. I think it was Adam’s first drop: he was up front and I was getting bait, when I looked up his rod was bent way over and he was quietly, slowly reeling up. “What is it, Adam?” I asked, like he would know. Slowly he reeled, trying not to break the 15 pound test line on the rod he was using. We were using light tackle, by the way. Finally we could start to see it… A flounder!! A big one. “Now we’re talking,” I thought, “a few of these and we’re good to go.” But it was the only one of the day, the rest of the day was full of sea bass and float lines getting hit but not hooked up.
We did see a 10 foot or so hammerhead shark, which was only unnerving because there were two boats of divers down. Oh well, it was nice getting out there and getting a few fish. We got home just in time for our wives to have cooked up some cobia sandwiches, NICE! WE LOVE WIFY'S...
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| Adam really liked his 8 pounder... |
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