Little Boat, Big Boat

Last Friday, before we left for our weekend concert tour, sponsored in part by our good friend and favorite big brother Hal Harless (thanks Hal), we hit the bay in our Gheenoe!! We left early and put in at the Courtney Campbell Boat Ramp. Eager for some good fishin' action, the chicks were rigged and ready. Now, let me just preface this story by saying that Andrea and I have caught a whopping 3 fish, to date, in the bay, where we fish in our little boat. So, coming straight off of two spectacular fishing days on my dad's big boat with an average haul of 50 to 100 fish, I think our little Andrea might have been just a bit jaded. Her comment to me during the drive to the ramp was, "we can put all the fish we catch in the cooler or on a stringer ok?" Again, we have caught 3 fish in the 5 times we have taken our boat out, you do the math. Never wanting to be the one to burst a bubble, I just smiled and nodded my head, thinking to myself, "she must be on crack."

Things started out a little bit rough because this was the first time that I had actually backed the boat onto a ramp, a ramp that slopes down into the water. Everything was going fine and then, the boat disappeared......down the ramp. Andrea's yelling "No, no, straighten it out, your going sideways!!!" I'm turning the wheel every which way, yelling back to her that I can't see the boat!!! Totally ignoring me, she continues to yell, "Why do you always go sideways??!!!" In another one of my more dramatic moments I slammed the car into park, got out and yelled, "You do it then!!!" And she did. She's such an ass.

So, I pulled myself together, parked the car and we loaded into the boat. The motor started right up, which took both of us by surprise and Andrea headed for the channel. I saw a big boat speeding toward us so I calmly let Andrea know, and for one split second she got this "deer in headlights" look on her face and I was sure that I had felt that exact same look on my own face right before I crashed a Jon Boat into the seawall in Crystal River (we'll save that story for another day). Always cool headed, she gained control of the boat and her expression, while I tried hard to erase the Jon Boat incident from my mind. Off we went.

The day's haul totaled a whopping 2, a Jack and a chubby Mangrove Snapper that would have been a keeper if it hadn't wiggled itself off of my hook before I got it into the boat. It was just as well though, I haven't really gotten up the nerve to actually kill a fish, even if I do plan to eat it. All in all, it was a good day though, not too hot, very relaxing with good friends and good fun.

Are any of you starting to notice a pattern here? Little boat, a little fish. Big boat, a lot of fish. Hmmmmmm.