The only problem: 6-8 foot seas scheduled for Saturday and 8-10 foot seas scheduled for Sunday. That is NEVER good. Pictures NEVER do seas justice. In fact, as I look through these pictures, the seas don't look very rough, but trust me, they were bad. I was attempting to head to S Tower about 50 miles offshore to look for red grouper, but we never made it. Because of the wind and waves, we were forced to stay in State Waters about 9 miles offshore.
The night before, our favorite country rock band, Tobacco Road performed a concert for everyone. In fact, Paul Consulting Group just completed the website for Tobacco Road. Check it out here.
There were several of us on the boat this Saturday. In addition to those of us fishing, we also had "new guy" Josh taking videos and photographs all day. He did a great job. In fact, we will VERY SOON be posting more videos of this latest trip on the Capt'n Hook YouTube channel. Look for those videos in the next week. You can get to our YouTube channel by clicking on the link at the top of the CaptnHook website.
And our presence on Google is increasing. If you have fished with me, go to Google and type in "Fishing Florida's Forgotten Coast" - and click on Images. See if your picture comes up towards the top. It probably will.
So Josh did a great job of taking photos and videos all morning. I would like to say that we caught HUGE fish, but we didn't. Huge fish are very difficult to come by in State Waters. But Josh did get some fantastic photos along the way. Some of my favorite ones are his shots of SJ. Who knew the little kid was so photogenic.
For the most part, I think the pictures speak for themselves, and since there are so many photos, I think I will comment less in this blog and just let you enjoy the shots with only short comments scattered through. Also, I am behind in my work duties :-)
SJ - First thing in the morning (what a great shot):
Crab? No idea here. Perhaps our new photographer is a little odd. I know his girlfriend is.
The Coast Guard Foundation sent me a new hat and FlardaFish, as you already know, is our sponsor for apparel. Personally, I think they look great together:
Looks even better with the Capt'n Hook visor on Sam.
Ahhhh..
You're killing me wind:
This is where I decided to get the crew's opinion. Remember that my goal was to head to S Tower about 50 miles offshore. I told everyone that I would make the final decision to head there (or not) when we reached the 26 buoy which is about 10 miles away from Rock Landing. Well, right before we got to the 26 buoy, we hit a cresting 6 foot wave. Now, my boat is about 5000 pounds, and with a full fuel tank, that adds another 1000 pounds, and with 7 people on board, that adds another 1000 pounds. Simply said, my boat is heavy. But for the first time EVER, after we hit that wave, the entire vessel, including the engines, went airborne. When we slammed back into the ocean, Mike said, "I gotta go see a chiropractor on Monday".
Needless to say, we made the decision to only go another mile to my state water waypoint(s) instead of heading another 30 miles into deeper, much rougher, federal waters. The Gulf was bad, bad bad!
Group meeting. Decision time. Skyler's hat was facing down when we started. He didn't move it on his own.
Okay, so the water doesn't seem to be bothering Gene much:
Again, pictures never do the seas justice, but you can see by Gene's shirt that the wind is blowing like a banshee. After a few hours, even Gene had had enough.
Rock The Dock? No, Rock the Gulf!
I'll give everyone credit. Even though it was rough, we caught LOTS of fish. In this case, none of them exceptionally large, but we did put about 35 fish in the box. Way to go guys! And girl!
Great shot of Mikey.
Conditions never seems to bother Megan. That girl loves to fish! And she looks great doing it.
Dang Mike. The gym is paying off. You are a beast! You know, I do find you physically attractive.
Sam watching Megan fish? Yeah, that makes sense. :-)
Are we boring you SJ?
Cute couple.
I like these GoPro shots!
Some of the fish we caught were pretty good sized.
I think just about everyone took a turn on the bean bags.
Thanks again FlardaFish! We all look good on camera! If you want to give us more shirts, we won't stop you.
Josh, what exactly are you taking a video of here?? :-)
Fish box starting to fill up. That is what Josh was filming, btw.
Mr. Photogenic:
I have no idea what I am doing here, or that I was being photographed. I actually was trying to have some fun riding the waves without holding on. I wasn't very successful. Mike is simply ignoring me.
I'm definitely not as photogenic as SJ.
So even though the weather was rough, I still think everyone had a good time. We parked the boat Saturday afternoon, started drinking beer and never even considered taking it back out again on Sunday. We were all pretty exhausted.
I have asked Josh, who was our photographer, and who had never been offshore fishing, to give us all his opinion of the day. So the next blog post, which will be in a day or so, will be his perspective on the day.
And we will be posting new videos to our YouTube channel soon. A couple of them are kind of funny.
Thanks for reading everyone. Oh, and Caroline, I have a surprise for you.
I hope to be back soon - although almost EVERYTHING (all species) in the Gulf are closed right now for recreational fishermen. Don't get me started. In fact, lots of locals want me to create a non-profit lobbying corporation to represent recreational fishermen in Florida. Commercial versus recreational rights and quotas have become quite skewed - with recreational fishermen losing out at every turn. Apparently, red snapper, for recreational fishermen, will only be open 3 days this year. 3 days! And two of those days are weekdays. Gag grouper are closed all year as well as AmberJack. What do you think I should do?
Gotta go.
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