Winds of Change are Blowing

Guess what? There's a story behind this Sheepshead!! Andrea and I spent the weekend at our favorite beach cottages called Changing Tides. Oh, if only we could have changed the tides, we would have had a much better fishing weekend.

We've been looking forward to staying there ever since we got our boat because there are boat slips in the back of the cottages. Dreaming of pulling up to the cottage in our new boat, we headed out on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately the wind was really bad all weekend and we never actually got to drive the boat from the ramp to the cottage, it was just too choppy, and we are just too wimpy (says Jason).

Soooooo, we decided to just hang out at the cottage and fish off of the dock. We met some other peeps who were out there fishing and we all became fast friends. They were having the absolute best time catching Catfish off of the dock. It was at that moment that I realized I might take fishing a bit too seriously. I'd rather have a root canal than catch a Catfish, but honestly it really is about the thrill of the catch and just having fun.

While fishing off of a small dock I spotted this large Sheepshead happily eating barnacles from the bottom of a sailboat. I quietly called everybody over to have a look, then made up my mind that I was going to catch it. I put a shrimp tail on my hook and just let it hover at the surface of the water by the boat. Low and behold, I caught it!! I watched it unassumingly take the bait and head back under the boat. Hooked!! That was the first time ever I had actually seen what I was trying to catch. It was very cool. Thanks to Rose, Abel, Julie, and Kelly for the picture and a really great Saturday afternoon!!

Oh and thanks to Andrea too for providing non-stop entertainment for the masses!! :)

Holy Freakin' Cow

What a Hog!!!



If you think he looks bad, you should have seen me!!!


Jeez, I don't even know where to start. We decided to take the boat out last night (Monday) because it had been very windy all weekend long and we were in dire need of a fishing fix. All shakey and sweaty from withdrawl, we hooked up the boat and headed for the bait store. About a mile down the road we realized that in all the excitement of getting the boat ready, we forgot the dock ropes and our depth finder. How in the world could anyone forget their ropes and depth finder, you ask? Obviously my friend, you have never suffered from fishing withdrawl. Fortunately we were headed to our night time sweet spot and that happens to be only about 3 minutes from the boat ramp. We're to skeeerd to go out any further in the dark. Old salts, we're not!!

So, Andrea backed the boat off of the trailer (since we didn't have our ropes) and it actually worked out really well. Mr. Fix it had shown us how to do that when we first got our boat and thank God (again) for Mr. Fix it. For those of you who may be new to the blog, Mr. Fix it is my dad, who just happened to be fishing on the other side of the bridge last night and caught his bag limit of Mangrove Snapper. We'll be waiting for that fish fry call, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Alright I'll get to the fishing report. The evening started out slow, the water wasn't moving much, and it was a little bit windy but not too bad. Andrea had rigged our poles up before we left and we were ready to go. I don't think we even had a bite for the first 45 minutes that we were out there. Then, something under the dock started antagonizing Andrea (it's amazing how smart fish are). She'd get a bite and yank her line and the shrimp would come flying out of the water missing about 1/4 of its body. She threw it back, yanked it again and another 1/4 was gone. She did this until her bait was gone and then re-loaded and started the same routine again. After about four shrimp and 16 tries she stared to get a little upset but I just went about my business. Every now and again I would hear an expletive, not uncommon when fishing with Andrea.

About an hour had passed and I had pulled up one or two little Mangrove Snapper and Andrea starts yelling, "YEAH!!! I got the little son of a bi*#$, that'll teach you, don't you dare even think about getting off my line." I turned to see her reeling in this 11 inch Mangrove Snapper with a fat little belly and a huge grin on it's face." You gotta love Mother Nature.

Well, it's 7:15 a.m. and I have to get ready for work. You'll have to come back tonight if you want to hear the story that goes with the picture of that monster on the side of our boat!!

Ok, I'm back.......Now about that monster. I was just chillin' out, getting ready to call it a night and I decided to give my dad a quick buzz to give him a fishing report. I no sooner got the words, "there hasn't been much action over here" out of my mouth when this huge freight train hit my line. It was the most unbelievable thing that I have experienced in a long time. It was fighting like crazy, it was huge, and it was on the end of MY line. I don't remember much from between the time the fish hit my line and the time I finally got it to the boat, but I do remember that I was standing on the bow of the boat and it pulled me down from there. What a rush. All I could think about was keeping it on my line so I could see what in the heck it was.

Andrea was scrambling with the camera so we could get a good picture and I was just trying keep myself in the boat. I kept yelling, "it's a shark, I think it's a shark!!!" All I knew was that it was big. REAL BIG!!

As it turns out it was a monster Red Drum. We could barely lift the thing out of the water for a picture, besides I was really scared of it. Brave Andrea finally lifted it out of the water with a towel so we could get a picture. I know I joke about Andrea a lot but she is always right there making sure that I have everything I need to have a great time fishing. She's my fishing angel!!

So there you have it. We have no idea exactly how big that fish was but it keeps getting bigger every time we tell the story. To put it into perspective though just look at the size of that fish's head compared to the size of Andrea's hand. It was BIG, REAL BIG!!!

As a side note I would like to add that you guys can post comments to any of our blogs and we would love to hear from you. So get posting!!!