Tug Boat Stir

Ok, let me start out by explaining the picture up there. Andrea is always saying that I purposely post ONLY good pictures of myself and that I post all bad pictures of her. So.........To prove that I do no such thing, here is the absolute worst picture of myself that I have ever seen. It was taken on July 21, 2007, on Scott's Birthday, at his favorite Chinese Buffet. Happy Now Andrea?

Fishing today was uneventful, for the most part. We were so ready to get out on the water after all this rain that we totally neglected to check the wind. We got the boat hooked up without a hitch. Well actually, we had a hitch, we just didn't have a hitch getting the boat on the hitch. Alright, now I'm confused. We got the boat hooked up with no problem. We got gas and bait no problem. Launched the boat, still no problem. When we got to the open water at the end of the canal, problem. Waves, big ones, bigger than our boat ones.

We did make it over to the flats to try to catch some bait, with my new chum recipe that includes a can of Jack Mackeral. We caught some Pin Fish but quickly realized that we really weren't going to need that much bait if we were going to have to stay in the canal. So, off we went, back to the canal. We have this little spot that we like to call the corner. It's located, as you might guess, right on the "corner" of the canal. We've had some pretty good luck there. But today, as luck would have it, there was a very large barge parked almost directly in front of our spot. Crap!

We managed to shimmy our way in between the barge and our spot then threw out the anchor. Andrea's watching the anchor rope quickly disappear and she says, "man it's really deep here!!" To which I reply, "news flash, barges don't usually dock in 3 feet of water, Andrea!!" I don't think she appreciated my tone.

We fished for an hour or so and had not one bite. Well, Andrea thought she had a couple bites but it turned out she baited her hook with this really large Pin Fish and it was just trying to swim against the current.

We were anchored pretty close to the barge and Andrea noticed that there was a door on the back end of it. I took note too and kept on fishing. About 15 minutes later this gentleman comes out wearing a hair net or something on his head. He may have been the barge cook or something, I don't know. Anyway, he proceeds to ask us how we're doing. I smile and say, "oh fine thank you, how are you?" Before the poor guy even has a chance to respond Andrea yells, "no we're not doing fine, we haven't caught one thing!!!" Now she was right, we hadn't caught a thing, but our boat wasn't sinking, so I figured we were pretty darn fine. Whatever. All the poor guy wanted to do was tell us that a big tug boat was going to be pulling up and docking right behind the barge and it might cause quite a stir in the water. I don't know if you've ever seen the waves that a tug boat makes but a "stir" is a bit of an under statement. We thanked the nice man in the hair net, pulled up our anchor and left.

It was still pretty windy so we headed back up the channel to a big dock where there are usually yachts docked, but there were no yachts there today so we decided to fish there for a while. After we were there for about 10 minutes, sure enough, we saw the tug boat that Mr. Hairnet warned us about. It pulled into the channel, honked it's big tug boat horn and started backing in behind the barge. As we're watching the tug boat Andrea decides that being a tug boat captain would be a really great job for me!! She says, "Keeeum, that's what you should do, drive a tug boat!!! You'd get to fish off the boat, honk the horn, and you wouldn't have to worry about anything because you'd be protected by all that rubber around the boat." Good God, there wouldn't be a channel marker left standing if I got behind the wheel of a tug boat. Ask Andrea to tell you the John Boat story.

The long and short of our second spot is that we didn't catch anything there either, but we laughed a lot. Andrea gets a little bit annoyed with the fact that I leave things laying around sometimes, ok most of the time. Anyway, she gets most annoyed at the way that I take the top off of a water or gatorade bottle and then end up losing the top because I don't put it back on the bottle. So I'm fishing and she's straightening up the boat (she does that a lot) and she says, "I swear I think you eat the tops to these water bottles and since you do maybe you'd like to tear into this Jack Mackeral can that you left sitting over here!!" Always the smart ass, that Andrea. But she does make me laugh and you know they say that laughter IS the best medicine. Although I prefer Valium myself. JUST KIDDING.


We actually did get some bites at the yacht basin but we never did pull anything in. I had what felt like a pretty good size fish on my line but it made a bee line back toward the bridge and cut me off on some barnacles. We ended up having to put up our bimini top because the sun was getting so hot. The sudden shade must have reminded Andrea of being on a picnic or something because I turned around to find her all stretched out on the back boat seat just chillin' out. She would sit up every now and again to re-cast her line and each time she would tell her shrimp, "alright now, you be good and don't get eaten." Now, scary thing number one is she's talking to a freakin' shrimp, but even scarier thing number two is that I was losing shrimp right and left and she must have had that same shrimp on her line for an hour. I'm thinking that she could start her own shrimp training show at Seaworld. Can't you just see the little shrimp doing flips and jumps like the dolphin!! "'Focus your binoculars at the center of the pool for this amazing arial shrimp display!!! Don't blink or you'll miss it!!"

Oh My God. I think I may have gotten overheated. Maybe I should have stayed in the shade too.

Peace, Love, and Tug Boats