Sunday, May 31, 2009

5.30.09 - FSFA Tourney
by Robin

Jack also fished this day but not in the tournament. I will make a post about that later.

Here is the link from our local newspapers if you want to read about the contest winners. Some of them are friends from Jack's fishing forum.

Fishing article here

Happy Fishing
Robin

Saturday, May 30, 2009

5.28.09 - Mahi Run again
by Robin


4 am - alarm
5:10 am - in the car
6 am - putting boat in at docks

Then, watch the sun come up as we're leaving the port entrance.

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7 am - 200 ft of water, lines , head east. Lots of fliers. Circle around that area.
7:30 am - Robin gets a 12 lb bull. What a fight for me. Twelve pounds of mad bull is a lot for this gal!!

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8- 8:30 am- Jack fights 30 lbs bull (more story later). Loses it boatside. Line breaks. Our hearts all break.

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9:00 - 10 am - Another big bull on the line. 20-25 lbs. Get double-hook up with the cow taking the other line. Robin fights the cow, Jack fights the bull. Cow spits out the hook about 30 feet from the boat. She was big!! Jack gaffs his bull. Bull jumps off gaff. He dives down and breaks the line.

Troll west back towards home. Clouds are building early.

11 am - Jack hooks a smaller bull in 185 ft.

11:30 am - more knockdowns in 155 ft. No fish.

12:30 pm - Robin lands Kingfish in 125 ft of water. He charged the boat and I couldn't reel fast enough. Then... he saw the boat and took off the other way.

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Run back in full speed at 110 ft of water. 19 miles to home.

2:05 Storm is meeting us at the dock.

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2:10 stow gear
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Looks at the gusts on the palm frawns.
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Storms were coming about an hour earlier each day of the week.

Driveway ornaments on Thurs.
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Jack cancelled his trip on Friday. Good thing. We had storm after storm!! He's out today with another charter trip. There is also a tournament going on at the port. We had to wait in line with about 20 other boats. Everything went smoothly for my launch.

Look for future pictures of that charter.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

5.26.09 MAHI fishing w/ the Family
by Robin


This will be short & sweet since it was a long, fun day. Lots of playing hard and our family is tired (most sleeping already).

Beautiful sunrise. Cleared the port at 7:30am, after being held up for a sub to enter the port.

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Cruised 27 knots out to 115-ish feet when we saw our first rip/ temperature break.

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Very fishy. I spotted a small phin (dolphin - AKA mahi mahi). Two lines in. Made a couple North/South passes and then went East. Double hook-up in less than a .5 mi.

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Yeah..... Oh except that Jack got the boat very bloody with trying to knock out our eldest's fish. With 2 fish doing aerobatics in the boat floor, flying double-hooks , I was barefoot, son with sandals, Jack made the decision to knock them out. ONLY.... the big girl didn't like that idea. Sigh.

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Another rip/temp break about 125 ft, other boats on the same rip. Kept going east. Got dead looking so we went back to the first area. Probably should have headed out deeper. We stopped about 140 ft because the storm clouds seem to be building fast on the coast. Another boat landed 7 in 178 feet, between trolling & a floating log. That's probably where Jack will focus later in the week, looking for those big 30 lb mahi.

It was a good opportunity with the flat seas to capture a couple elusive flying fish photos. They're not elusive, as in rare. They're so quick it is nearly impossible to have your camera ready. Fortunately for me, the water clarity was pretty good today and I could see some swimming along before they went flying.

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Saw numerous turtles, puffer fish on the surface (24 mi offshore!), crevalle jacks in schools, multiple bonito bait crashing parties, a large pod of dolphins (mammals), too many to county small mahi that would not eat big ballyhoo rigs, schools of barracuda, sardines, unknowns (blue fish?), and a large Greater Hammerhead that we could follow to capture a decent picture to save my life. The ocean was very much alive in the morning. By 11am, it was so hot & flat, the bite & activity of critters slowed down.

As mentioned earlier, we headed back in at 12:30 to save time & fuel. Nice to call it a day early. Took our time cleaning fish & boat. A big boomer showed up at 5:30 instead of earlier like we had thought. It's better to be safe than sorry. Jack needed the rest anyhow.

Tomorrow, no charters. Thurs, Jack had another customer but we may either crash his charter or bump him for later. I think we can fill the box much better in a couple days.

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Learning curve: get out EARLIER. Go farther. Have more spinners ready for smaller fish.

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Monday, May 25, 2009

5.25.09 - MAHI REPORT
by Robn

I don't have much of a story since Jack came in exhausted. He left the camera at home.


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Jack's first day of planned charters with co-workers while he is on furlough is a success. Granted, it was slow fishing and they only had 1 mahi mahi landed, 1 knockdown, and several schoolie dolphin that didn't want the horse-sized ballyhoo. But, they brought home meat to share.

The short stats are:
Lines in at 120 ft, trolled to 200 ft. Bull caught in 170-ish feet. Weighed about 11 lbs. Water temp in high 70's. Water was blue but slightly dirty. Fliers few and far between. Using double-rigged ballyhoo.

Came back in and came across a nice temperature break - pocket of 80.5 deg water (or something close to that) and while they looked around, they saw the schoolies. They also saw a school of rays. 70 ft of water.

Will probably try again as long as the rain doesn't stop us. Tomorrow is family day for fishing. It's been a month already since the last time we fished together.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

POOL REPORT
by Robin

It's Open & the Sun is out!!!

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This picture has nothing to do with the pool. My lovely hand model (notice in the blueberry pictures) wanted to show you his pet snail.

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Jack has firmed up a few charters for the week. We may be heading offshore ourselves in the next day or two on Mike & Helen's boat. (from last year) I just really want to see some blue water and not the dishes or laundry. Honestly........

Happy Fishing!!
Robin

Friday, May 22, 2009

FISHING CHARTERS
by Robin

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We're officially open for business this last week of May/ early June. Jack's company is having furloughs over the summer and so we thought we'd make lemonade out of some lemons.

Jack has booked a couple trips next week. I'm looking forward to fishing some, but also having a ton of pictures to sort through and post here. The mahi mahi (dolphin) have finally come in closer to shore so we don't have to spend gallons and gallons of gas trying to find them in the Gulf Stream.

It has been an awful spring for fishing. Winds were bad early on and now, we're in winds & rain. Over 7" at my house and a foot in some cities in Central Florida in the past few days. Waves went over 15 ft, but are suppose to drop in time for the charter trips.

Stay tuned for fishing pictures.
POOL LINER REPLACEMENT
by Robin

This is not a How-To post.... it's a vent!!

I dreaded every thought of having to replace the liner in our pool. (Son tearing the liner to drian the water.)

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I don't know what I would do if I didn't have these two guys doing most the work. Jack is the miracle man. I have no idea how he did most of this while we were at church one morning.

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I did get in there and push out some wrinkles on the bottom. Worked on my tan.

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Then, I took a lot of photos and left. I had to go make blueberry jam. I'm so glad I gave birth to boys. They can do all these jobs that I don't want to. LOL

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Here is somebody very desperate to have a pool again.
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The pool is officially open for business but the only ones taking advantage of it during the past few days of a foot of rain, is frogs. We've scooped out numerous eggs. Ugh.

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

501 st POST!!!
by Robin

Hey folks, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. Life is been very busy. We changed out the pool liner (pics to come one day) and fishing hasn't been accessible for us. Many folks went out on the 17th and caught large dolphin in the 170 ft range. Some mahi were spotted in the 80 ft range even, which is something we've been waiting on.

The other thing we're waiting on is the weather. We've had some blessed rain to soak in the ground for 3 days. Yeah. The garden is happy, but the fishermen are not. Today, the winds have really picked up and the seas are somewhere between 12-14 ft high. I do hope that nobody is out there in this mess.

Next week, Jack begins one of his furloughs at his company. He's done a good job of lining up charter clients for a couple days of the week. The seas are suppose to lay down pretty well by then, but we will continue to hope it does so.

I don't suppose that I am going on those charters, although one of them does have a lady aboard (fiance'). I know Jack could use the 2nd pair of hands, but I'm not sure if the client will like having the kids with them.

I hope to be a little bit more in touch the 2nd half of the week.
Happy Duck Weather!!
Robin

Friday, May 15, 2009

ANOTHER SHUTTLE REPORT
by Robin

A friend sent this to me about the Endeavor flight back in late 2008. It was shown in the Boston newspaper/internet. However, we thought it was very cool because we saw the shuttle take off at night. Then, one day, my youngest and I were on our way home from grocery shopping and saw the Endeavor strapped to the back of the 747, coming in for a landing to the Kennedy Space Center landing strip. It's one of those things you won't ever forget seeing. It was just big as day, right in front of us. What a shocker. We live in such a unique part of the world.

So, this give you the entire process from beginning to end. Enjoy!!
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/round_trip_with_endeavour.html

As for fishing reports, I'm not certain the seas will lay down for a weekend trip or not. We will see. I'm beginning to miss my blue water.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

POOL REPORT -
The pool is closed until further notice.


Our liner has decided to crumble, biting the dust just as soon as I took the time to get all the chemicals straightened out and it was sparkling blue. Every where we walked, it fell apart. I felt like I was the little boy who kept trying to put his thumb in all the cracks in the dam. I just couldn't glue enough vinyl, fast enough. We could no longer put off the inevitable.

The silver lining to this situation is that I have one very happy boy who thought it was the coolest job in the world to take a knife to the rest of the liner to create more area for water loss.

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By the next day, the 5000 gallon pool was totally empty. Yeah. Now, we're letting it dry and will do a change-out over the weekend. Lucky us! (not)

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We are praying that the next liner lasts us around 3 yrs or so and after that, we'll be in some sort of position to put in an inground pool. Wouldn't that be nice?

Not fishing turned out to be a good idea on Monday. Several variables went into making that decision. 1) winds increased more than expected 2) shuttle = less fishing grounds due to safety concerns 3) rain started for the first time in something like 25 days 4) thunder/lightening
5) my back went out. 6) we're just coming off a full moon. 7) Pool liner moved up in priority. God, via prayer, was very instrumental in helping us making our decision. I noticed that other fishermen were saying the fishing was slow unless you were 30+ mi offshore. We don't do that in our single-engine boat, especially with children.

Happy Fishing all! Looks like we're coming into our rainy season finally.
Robin
ATLANTIS to HUBBLE
by Robin

While it was a successful launch on Monday afternoon, it was a difficult one to see. I'm so glad that they were able to get it off the ground because an hour later, we had rain followed by lightening/thunder.

As Jack predicted, it would be better to see over the NASA channel rather than out the front door. I took this picture from the kids' playhouse. While I did catch a nano-second view of it twice, the camera did not capture the same thing. If you see a shuttle in this picture, your eyes are better than mine (which isn't that hard to claim as of late). It should have been over the palm trees on the right side.

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Monday, May 11, 2009

MOTHER'S DAY LUNCH
by Robin

Yesterday, I was treated to an awesome home-cooked meal by my guys.

It involved some cobia, caught a couple weeks ago.

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Cobia on left. And we have some snapper on the right. Oh my.... the snapper out-did itself. Cobia is great, but red snapper is moving up on my list of favorites.
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My lunch also involved some pineapple.
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And a grill.....
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Oh my, oh my....
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On the inside, we made a corn & potato "boil" with some old bay added to the water. Plus Jack cut up a very fresh canteloupe from the Farmer's Market in town.
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It was delicious!!!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

HOW TO FILET MAHI AND TUNA
by somebody else!!

I did not take these videoes, but thought they would be awesome to post here.

We're still undecided about fishing tomorrow. Weather is great but the mahi we're looking to catch are still far out and few between. The moon was just full a couple of days ago. You'll know tomorrow night if we went out or not.

Also, the shuttle is launching at 2pm!! http://www.google.com:80/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hOt2bUykNnyajT93GgF4bmvQawKgD982R8FG0

As I have mentioned earlier, there are 2 shuttles on the launch pads which we will never see again. Our family were blessed to witness this the last time we went out fishing. Feel free to read the article on why.

Here are the fileting videoes:


Friday, May 08, 2009

CAPE CANAVERAL close-up from the water
by Robin

The lighthouse
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Kennedy Space Center from the ocean
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One building between the launch sites.... On the north side of the Cape.
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Closer up, same building. VAB building in the background.
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I cannot find the actual shuttle launch site pictures that I thought I took. I may have had an accidental erasing. I'll look for them again.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Deuteronomy 4:19
by God

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And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.


Sunday, May 03, 2009

VIGNETTE on GUPPY BOY
by Robin

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This is a name that my sister gave him back when he was a toddler. He absolutely loved the water as a baby and still loves it as an almost-teenager.

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He helped Jack and I plug many tears in the pool liner tonight. (Long nightmarish story - don't ask- time for a new liner soon)

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The pool is still in the beginning stages of being shocked, cleaned and ready for guests. I asked him to get in there and scrub it and he does. He's why the pool is near perfection by early May. He's doing whale imitations here. (lol)

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I took all these goofy pictures the other day of him with his approval. We were trying to make water freeze photographically. We had a lot of fun doing this.

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Tomorrow, we are looking closely at the weather forecast for fishing. There are several factors to consider. Mahi mahi still aren't very close "in" but they're getting there. I'm not sure if it would be better to wait a week or not. We're weighing all this.

Happy Fishing!!
Robin

Friday, May 01, 2009

TESTING, TESTING, 1, 2, 3, TESTING
by Robin

Semi-ignore. I'm trying out the new Hi-Def before taking it out on the boat.

This is through YouTube, which is nowhere the sharpness as on my PC.