Two Minnows and a Barf Bag

Ok, now I've heard the saying, "A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work." Well, I'm here to tell you THAT was NOT the case on Sunday. We ended up getting the boat in the water at around 9:30am or so and everything seemed to be ok. Except that, the minute Andrea cranked up the motor she started complaining that she had to pee. We only passed about 27 gas stations and stopped at a bait store on the way to the ramp but nooooooooooooo. She just has to wait until we're on the water. I just smiled and tried to ignore her, hoping it would pass, but she kept saying over and over, "I really need to pee, we really need to find somewhere to pee." As far as I could see it her choices were a bit limited, but I didn't want to be the bearer of that bad news.

As we came to a stop in a shallow area I got out my cast net. Now I had been waiting all week long to throw this net for two reasons. First, my father told me that I would NEVER be able to throw a cast net out of a Gheenoe and second, our dear friend Jason said I would NEVER catch anything with only a 4 foot net. Being a red head and all, the very last thing that you want to tell me is that I can't do something, because come hell or high water (and they both did) I WILL do it. And I did, but it wasn't pretty. Andrea just sat in the back of the boat quietly chanting, "I know something bad's gonna happen, I just know something bad's gonna happen." And it really didn't, unless you count that fact that I threw the cast net about fifty times in the blazing heat and only caught two minnows. What can I say? Sometimes you're the wind shield, sometimes you're the bug.

At some point during my cast net catastrophe Andrea started to get a little bit miffed. Partially because once I get something in my head I'm a bit compulsive and partially because she REALLY had to pee now. So my little Daffodil decides to drop trow and hang it over the side of the boat, a Gheenoe no less. It was a Kodak moment if I ever saw one, but I didn't dare move one inch toward that camera. It was really hard though.

Things started to look up for a couple of minutes until we realized that we were in REALLY shallow water and we had to start paddling and paddling and paddling, all the water was really shallow and it was getting scorching hot out. We saw a lot of sea grass, sting rays, a jelly fish, and a bunch of minnows on steroids.

Once we got into some deeper water we decided to head back over to the inlet where we fished the first day. We got over there and baited our hooks and right about the same time we both got huge tangles in our lines. After fighting with the tangles, in the blazing heat, for about a half hour we decided to just cut the line and re-rig the poles. Geeeeeze, what else could go wrong!!??

We fished at that location for a little while and didn't even get one bite. Hot and sweaty, we decided to move. Cruisin' along I notice that Andrea slows the boat. I turned around to look at her and she says, "I have the motor turned up full blast but we're not going very fast." THAT CAN'T BE GOOD. It wasn't, there was sea grass wrapped all around the prop on the motor. Paddling once again while Andrea cleans the crap off the prop. Damn it was hot!!!

We paddled out of the sea grass and decided to try our hand at fishing one last time. Still no luck. To quote Andrea at about noon, "This is f#@*ing miserable!!" I agreed but wasn't able to say much due to the heat exhaustion, I was starting to feel really sick. Ironic enough, 2 hours earlier Andrea's ass was hanging off the boat and now my head was hanging off the boat. Ain't life grand!! But, yet again, we were too shallow for the motor so we had to paddle ourselves the rest of the way in. I managed to get the car and help put the boat on the trailer but Andrea had to drive us home because I was not in very good shape!!!

She got us home safe and sound and even cleaned up the boat. She's a trooper, my little Daffodil. Here's to better fishing days ahead!!