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...