The BIG One That Got Away

Saturday April 10th 2010

Early in the morning I hear beating on my boat, so I get dressed to go investigate to find Captain Edward (a local fisherman) standing on the dock. He wanted to know if Jen and I would like to go fishing with him. I tell him I would be happy to go but I didn’t know if Jen would get out of bed to go fishing. So he says he will be back in 15 minutes. I am pretty excited to take advantage of some free fishing lessons. We are taking Mario’s boat (a part time local).  Both men are in their mid seventies. and right off start bickering at each other. Jen laughs and says it is like watching the movie Grumpy Old Men live. We drove about 10 miles off shore to Ed’s secret spots and began to bottom fish for Grouper. We ended up catching 3 legal grouper and about 15 black sea bass. Beginners Luck had me catching the biggest and the most, so I had a lot of fun and we learned a lot.   Both Mario and Edward are interesting individuals and even more so when they are together. On Sunday night we cooked rice and fish for them.  Thanks a lot for teaching a couple of land lovers from Oklahoma how to deep sea fish. We had a blast.(The Red Grouper is 26 inches long.)

I installed a 110 volt wall outlet in our cockpit. it gets old running extension cords up there every time we want to do something. The new office is looking pretty good. Just have paint and varnish left.

There are some little bugs called no’see’ems and those little buggers are brutal in the evenings, especially when the wind isn’t blowing. I would rather have a Houston skeeter or Dairy farm flies any day than no see ems . Jen looks like she has chicken pox because of the welts they leave on her.

Jen, Sis, and I took Jenny (our aluminum boat) across the river into a bayou and cruised around for an hour or so in the tall marsh grass. Jen and Sissy took naps while I explored, until I saw the tail of an alligator slip into the water, then everyone was on alert.

(The bank is flattened down where I saw the tail go in the water.)