Regatta

Each year, the scouts put on a Regatta in Apalachicola Bay. They have about 10-15 Hobey Cats that they race around a course that has been set up.

It's interesting to watch these teenagers sail their Hobeys. The Coast Guard Auxiliary always assists by doing safety patrol to aid any of the sailors who might run into trouble and also to keep power boats from running through the boats as they are racing. Power boats are always supposed to give way to sailboats, but sometimes there are idiots who don't understand this. So we always have to ward off a few. Mostly though, the races are run smoothly and everybody has fun.

The scout parents and troop leaders always put on a good feed for lunch and at the end of the day.

I forgot my camera but my good friend Jerry Thompson was kind enough to share this shot with me. Enjoy.

Boy Scout Regatta, Saturday May 6th,2006

 

NUMB3RS

It's all about the numbers. No not FBI or lottery. It's about GPS numbers.

Before the era of GPS navigation systems, fishermen used to locate their favorite fishing spot offshore by plotting a course over a certain amount of time to get to an approximate point. Then they would either troll or drag a bar of soap over the bottom till they got to the exact (more or less) location they were seeking.

This location might be over a sunken wreck, natural reef, manmade reef, or even "hard bottom". But the experienced fisherman would know that there would be fish there. This method required a lot of skill and knowledge in order to be able to find the fish you were trying to catch.

Now it's all about the numbers: those grid coordinates as found on a map, expressed in degrees of latitude and longtitude. The best fishermen have their very top secret coordinates hidden away, never to be revealed to anyone, lest that person find the spot and catch "his" fish.

Which brings me to the accompanying photo. Ron Schlitt has some very good numbers. And when we go fishing with Ron, we catch some really nice fish, because he has the locations in his GPS chartplotter and they are really good spots.

This Red Snapper was caught in approximately 200' of water at one of Ron's Top Secret locations. It measured over 29" and compared to what we usually catch, it's nearly twice as big as the average. Naturally, it's the biggest one I've ever seen in my short offshore career, but he said it's the biggest one he's ever caught so it's BIG.

Ron Schlitt with his monster Snapper

 

Fishin', What else?

Early this week, it looked as if the seas might calm down and make an offshore trip possible. I hadn't been offshore since a trip up to Panama City Beach to fish with my buddies from Kentucky. So when it got to be bedtime Tuesday night and Tommy hadn't called, needless to say, I was a little disappointed, but not too much because the Gulf was still pretty rough with 2-3 footers coming in well into the night. I figured it just was going to be too choppy for a pleasant trip.

So Wednesday morning, I got up as usual and walked with Ron Dickey, returning at the usual time-around 8:30 A.M.

The phone message light was flashing and almost absentmindedly, I punched it to see what was there. "Hey Dave" as Tommy always opens his phone calls, "Jack and I are going fishing if you want to go." DID I?! Quickly, I called him, hoping he and Jack hadn't left yet. They hadn't, and I quickly showered and gathered up all my stuff( which I wisely had already prepared) and we were off to Tommy's house to get the boat ready.

The day turned out to be just a wonderful day to be on the Gulf. The winds were gentle breezes and the water was almost like a lake; it was just that calm. Conditions like this make it possible to go a little farther out than we do most trips. Our farthest fishing spot was around 27 miles from St George Island.

We didn't catch anything at the first spot, but subsequent stops produced a limit of Snapper, including Red, Gray, and Laine. Also, we caught our limit of one Red Grouper each. The only real mystery was the abscence of Gag Grouper, which we had been catching previously in good numbers. Which leads to the pictures.

We almost always catch a shark or two. Most of them are two to three feet long and probably weigh five to ten pounds. They are a nuisance mostly because we don't eat them and you have to get them off your hook or cut your leader and re-rig. The consolation is that they are fun to catch. We had already caught four or five of these.

This particular bad boy took a bait that Tommy was fishing off the stern of the boat. I made the mistake of offering to land this one because it immediately looked like a large fish by the way it was bending the rod. Tommy has had some trouble with his elbow and had said that if he hooked a large fish, would Jack or I handle it.

This thing was like a bus on the end of the line! I grabbed the rod and began to TRY to bring this fish to the boat. After what seemed like an hour(actually probably 10 minutes), I hadn't made much progress. Tommy and Jack were getting a lot of laughs watching me battle this guy.

"Bring 'im on in!"

"What's the matter, can't you get him to the boat?"

"He's still fifty feet away from the boat!"

"What's the problem, are you tired?"

I turned around to see Jack and Tommy with big grins on their faces, really enjoying my failure to get this fish to the boat. Just when I began to think this fish was going to take all day to come in, Jack must have felt sorry for me and asked if he could take over. I was to tired to resist, so he took the rod and, I estimate spent another ten to fifteen minutes working the rod before we finally could see what we had on the line.

In the meantime, I got the camera out and got these pictures as the shark came to the boat. At this point, we probably had spent a half an hour with this fish. Our estimate of the size is 6-7 feet and approximately 150 pounds. It's very hard to imagine how powerful these fish are until you have had one on the other end of your line and can feel how strong they pull and seeing what a job it is to get one to the boat.

Anyway, here are the pictures for your enjoyment.

Closer...

 

Closer...

 

Not yet.

 

Finally!