Gone Fishin'

Although Dad & I wanted to go out on a fishing charter, we both realized it was too dang cold to be out on a boat for 4-8 hours so we took Katrina & Brad out to the fishing piers near the Sunshine Skyway bridge.

I kind of like this picture, it brings to mind the title of a book called, "The Old Man & The Sea".

It was pretty cold out on the southern-most fishing pier, so we were bundled up as only a Floridian would in 40-degree weather.

The fishing piers are actually the approaches of the original bridge that was struck by a ship May 9th, 1980. When we had moved out to Tampa in the late 80s and heard this story, I was wondering why I hadn't known about this accident while we were kids back in Miami. Now that I just looked up the date of the accident, I now realize that this was 4 days after I was released from the hospital, recovering from a motorcycle accident that almost killed me.

Click here for information regarding the old bridge accident

Here is a view of the new bridge, the Sunshine Skyway. You can see the new bumper system that was put in to prevent ships from ramming into the bridge piers. The cable pipes above the center span are a bright yellow after a recent paint job.

And back to the fishing... It was cold here, and we only caught a couple of small French Grunts, so we pulled up camp and drove over to the north fishing pier to try our luck.

See, now the bridge is on the opposite side and farther away. And since the peir is shrouded from the wind by the Sunshine Skyway, we didn't need to be bundled up now. See, no jacket. We were pleased that we moved to this side, because the fishing action was better, although I ended up catching an Asian Green Muscle. I mean, how do you catch shellfish with a hook and line?

This picture shows how. When you're fishing on the bottom and your line falls across the open shell of a green muscle, it closes up and captures your line in its shell... I had to pry it open and since the Asian Green Muscle in an invasive species, it didn't bother me to open it up and use the carcass as bait on my hook. Unfortunately, I didn't catch a fish with this new bait, but at least I took care of that piece of invasive critter.

Wow, even though the bridge is huge, the ships that pass beneath it are pretty darn big too.

Here is Katrina, showing the usual result of catching a 'bottom fish'. What hapens is, you catch a fish, it starts to put up a good fight while you're reeling it in, then suddenly everything stops. You can tug and pull, but it isn't going anywhere. If you loosen the line though, the fish starts fighting again. It didn't get away, it's still there. Come to find out, another fidherman came over to tell us that the pilings for the old bridge are still out there in front of us and the fish are getting wrapped around them. The only recourse is to break the line. Boy, that sucks...

Well, the sun is starting to set now and it's getting colder, so it's about time to pack up.

The Florida sunsets are nice at this time of year.

Time to reel in th elines, wrap up the gear and put stuff away.

Of course, there's just enough time for one more 'closing shot' before leaving.

We had fun and caught an array of critters, to include 3 black Sea bass, 2 gray snappers, 1 scorpion fish & a ton of grunts. oh, and one Asian Green Muscle...

Last Geoevent Of The Year & Tarpon Springs

We attended the last geo-event of the year in our area and Dad came along with us. Afterwards, we stopped by the sponge docks in Tarpon Springs, toured the area and had dinner at one of their premiere Greek restaurants.

Here we are at the geoevnt, and Katrina is helping Captain Biggins with awarding the door prizes.

Did I mention that she also helped out with logging all of the visitors and giving them a raffle ticket for the door prizes? No, I guess didn't. I musta forgot...

Dad came with us and he got to see us in action as we awarded some of the winners from our latest geocaching contest.

Here is one of our winners, and she won a topaz blue colored geogem trophy with an ammo box trackable geocoin . Her seeker's name is L2W. Enough said...

This is the Seeker Family and they came in 3rd place in this contest, just like they did in last year's contest. Not bad for a busy family. They have an emerald colored geogem trophy with a celestial navigation geocoin.

Just before lunch, Luann Dad and I went for a ride on our bicycles to look for a cache or two, then we headed back for the eats.

Chow time!

When most of the cachers cleared out to go looking for those hidden containers, I taught Katrina about the finer points of riding bicycles, rodeo style. No feet down, kid!

Then we did a little tree climbing...

A nicely posed shot.

Well, it's getting to be time to pack it up soon.

So I grabbed Luann's bike and doubled-up back to the van.

Here's a neat B&W photo of the wilderness preserve we were in.

And Dad is all loaded up, playing his pocket poker game and is ready for the next portion of our adventure.

Which took us to the Tarpon Springs sponge docks. This pose is cute because in Dutch, the word grandfather is Opa. But in Greek, it means something similar to 'surprise'. Dad decided to strike an Opa pose to show them what a real Opa looks like.

Next, we toured the sponge museum. Unfortunately, it's starting to become a bit run down, which was mostly what Dad & I talked about.

Surprise! Yep, Katrina was there too.

We stopped along the docks to take some pictures of the pelicans.

It really surprised us with how many pelicans there were...

...until we looked to the left, that is. It turns out that this fishing boat came in and they were cleaning their catch and throwing the carcasses to the pelicans.

So we all went over to see how well they had done and how much it would cost go out on the boat.

Yeah, hang in there buddy, you're turn is coming soon!

Here's a map of the Tarpon Springs area. Of course, we were at the Sponge-O-Rama when I took this.

To finish off the evening, we decided to have dinner at a Greek restaurant. This explanation of the inhabitants of Tarpon Springs was on the back of the menu.

It was nice to be indoors where it was warm and we didn't need our jackets.

Flash! See, I finally got a picture of Luann. She doesn't look too pleased though, huh?

When the waiter saw me taking Luann's picture, he offered to take a family shot of us. Thanks, dude!

As we strolled back to the car, we were greeted by the last remnants of Christmas decorations. Soon, these will be comng down.

The next day, we pretty much stayed at home, until...

The opportunity to be the first geocachers to find a brand-new geocache presented itself. Even Dad wanted to go along for the hunt. The funny thing is, we found it without a GPS. I looked at the satellite maps and when we got there, I told Luann the general spot of where to look and she came up with the container. Dad sure is interested in the goodies that were in the container.

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

Hope all is well with you and yours...

It looks like Smokey likes his winter sweater we got him, although it did take a bit for him to adjust to wearing it.

Introducing... our new no-fuss, no-muss Christmas tree that you simply pull out of the box and plug in...

...whereupon I had to spend an hour fixing the top portion because the lights wouldn't work. Hey! I'm actually having to read the instructions!

We were invited to spend Christmas Eve at Pat & Teisha-Lyn's uncle's house (hope I got that right). Here is a family -group photo near the end of the evening. Lyn is holding her dog, Gizmo.

And here is Lyn and Pat 'standing on the dock of the bay, wastin' time....'

Dad and I decided to sit instead. We were waiting for the Christmas boat parade to start.

And so was Brad and Katrina (guess who was taking most of the photos).

Here is one of about 20 boats that went by, with Christmas lights and all kinds of decorations mounted on the boat.

We really liked the Santa's Sleigh edition.

This picture was one I took of the last boat going by, using time lapse. It looks interesting, to say the least.

So, as the group photos were being set up, Dad and I 'hid' in the hall, but it looks like somebody still snagged a shot of us and Dad took full advantage of the moment.

We had a bunch of fun tonight and it nice to feel so welcome with Pat and Lyn's family, we really appreciated the invite and we hope we didn't make too much of a fool of ourselves... Thanks again.