Deep Sea Fishing

Let's see where to start this...we had visitors the middle of September, and thoroughly enjoyed them. My dad and sister came out to visit us, and go to FL for some deep sea fishing. I promise next time to be more organized, and avoid what turned out to be quite a comedy of errors. Although it didn't seem to be comedy at the time, that's for sure.

Our company arrived on Friday evening, and we were all packed to head to the beach. Then we find out our hotel has cancelled our reservation. Great. Okay, let's just stay here for the weekend then. We can go to the winery, paddle boating to look for alligators, to the pumpkin patch for honey, lots of things around here.

We call the charter boat company, and they say no way, you can't cancel. We need 18 people to take the boat out, (our group was less than 18 people, but the biggest group going) we'll charge you anyway. So in the car we go, and off to FL.

It was late when we arrived, and more hotel headaches of which I will spare you the details. By the time we finally got settled, it was about 1am. We did end up in a nice hotel with adjoining rooms, which was really nice to get. Off to dreamland, to enjoy visions of dolphins and big fish on our hooks.

Up again early that morning, 5am. We rush through breakfast, and haul tail over to the dock to catch our boat. We arrive a few minutes early of our 7:30am show time. See the tumbleweeds, hear the crickets? Yeah, there is no-one there. No other passengers; there should be 12 other people showing up now. No crew readying the boat.

We call, and it turns out, that although we can't cancel on them, they sure can cancel on us. And they did. Great, thanks. After all we've gone through for this trip, now the main event is cancelled. After some discussion, we decided to split up, and mosey on the docks, see if any other boats would be interested in taking us out.

I had the boys with me, and although we didn't see anyone else, we did find an interesting form of advertisement. One captain thought it would bring in customers to throw dead sharks on the dock behind his boat. Um, I don't believe in killing what you don't eat, so to waste those beautiful animals is not going to get my business.

By the time we rejoined, the other group had us a boat, and a crew. We would be going out on the Barracuda at 11am. This gave us time to stock up on provisions, and maybe get a bite to eat if we needed it.

We had a wonderful time on the ocean. The crew was so nice to us, and so friendly. They allowed us to be as "hands on" as we wanted, such as baiting our own hooks, etc. The deck hand talked to us about the fish we were catching, interesting stories about other fishing boats, just a nice guy all around.

The first two fish we caught were Bonita. They are really pretty fish, silver with rainbow colors on them. Then we got to our fishing spot, and started pulling in snapper. They are so pretty! Big red fish, little teeth in their mouths. Then ds got something big on his line. It took a lot of work, and several people helping for him to land his big prize. At one point, ds was getting really discouraged, and I leaned up and whispered "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Phil 4:13. Shortly after that, ds had his fish! A 15 lb grouper!

I don't know if I've ever seen ds smile the way he did with that fish. He was so proud of himself!! We took several pictures of ds and his fish. He caught the biggest one of the day. That just completely made the fishing trip for ds. If he caught nothing else, (and he did), it would have been enough. I am so grateful he caught it. Maybe later on in life, when things get tough, he can think back, and say, 'I can do this, I landed that grouper!.'

We saw hundreds and hundreds of huge jellyfish. They were everywhere, and I was so worried we would catch one. Imagine a Christmas turkey or goose, or ham. Then imagine how big the platter would be to serve it to your guests. That's how big the jellyfish were. They were everywhere! I sure wouldn't want to jump in and swim at that point.

We had our lines in the water, and suddenly noticed this thing swimming around them that looked like a little shark! We were close, it was a ramora, which is a smaller fish that attaches itself to the shark, and feeds on it's scraps. My sister moved her pole over next to mine, in hopes that one of us would catch him. He finally took my bait, and I had him hooked.

The deckhand showed us the suction plate on top of the fish's head. It made him look upside down. If you put your hand flat on it, the fish would stick to your hand. After we all tried, it, the guy stuck the fish to the side of the boat. He said it would stay there until we got back to the dock if we let it. We released him though. Then he stuck around and stole everyone's bait!

DD caught a snapper, and after admiring it, and getting pictures, she let it go. Unfortunately, the experience had been really rough on him, and he wasn't doing so well back in the water. He laid on the top of the water until a dolphin snuck in and gobbled him up. Oops.

The dolphins were amazing though. There was a pod of five, most of which were mommas and babies. Baby dolphins are adorable, by the way. A miniature replica of their parents. They killed the fishing, but we sure enjoyed watching them for a while. A dolphin cruise, and fishing trip in one!


Ds caught a trigger fish, he was pretty proud of his catch. Trigger fish have two sets of dorsal fins. They can make on erect, and the other one flat, then vise versa. This makes it incredibly difficult for predators to pull them out of holes, or swallow them.

All too soon it was time to head back to shore. The boys were done fishing by this time, but I could have stayed out for hours more. We had a truly wonderful time catching fish, watching dolphins, and admiring the jelly fish. Oh, and I learned something else out there. Sunglasses cut the glare on the water, making it much easier to see what is down below. A great argument for Transitions lenses.

We headed back to our hotel, then went to dinner. It turns out that the first charter cancelling on us was a blessing in disguise. I love when God does that! You can look back and say, "Thank you! I didn't realize it at the time, but now I see what you were doing!" If we had gone on the first charter, we'd have been out on the water with 12 other people, for 8 hours, with no food or water. I'm afraid we'd have been miserable. As it was, we were the only people out there, (6 of us), and we had food and water. A much more pleasant trip, and only 4 hours.

The next morning, we were trying to figure out what to do with our day. We decided to go to the beach, although this one was about an hour away. We went to one of our favorite dept stores, and browsed around. They sell beach supplies, clothing, shoes, swimsuits, toys, hermit crabs, shells, decorations, etc etc. LOL It's a huge store. Things had improved a lot since the last time I was there, which was a good thing.

The beach was a lot of fun. Everyone enjoyed the sand bar, where you could be really far out, and still in shallow water. We found a lot of little shells as well. The birds were a lot of fun to watch as they hunted for food along the shore.

Thank You Jesus for such a wonderfully fun trip. Thank You for changing our plans for the better, and for all the fish we caught. We had a great time catching up, and catching fish. The dolpins were amazing, too. And thank You for ds' grouper. I love You! Amen.