Just Modern Day Gypsies: Here fishy fishy.........

Dawn breaks on another early day ( but isn't this so worth getting up for?)

"Here comes the sun" do you remember that song??

I can't say how many mornings have started at 4 am during this "vacation"!! Yesterday was one of them. But we had no problem getting up knowing we were going to be spending 10 hours on the Atlantic Ocean and the day was going to be beautiful. We arrived at the dock at barely dawn and other people had just arrived and were jumping on the boat to mark their fishing spot. This was what they call a Party Boat and could hold up to 110 people but we were lucky and there were only 26, which was plenty enough to get your line tangled in theirs especially when you had a fish on and it was running. We took off from New Smyrna Beach which is just south of Daytona Beach. We had a beautiful ride for 2 and a half hours to get to our 1st fishing spot. Unfortunately this became the first of many fishing spots. But at the 1st one people started catching fish, including Dusty and we were happy. We had bought into the boat jackpot of who ever caught the biggest fish got all the money (no splitting with boat), and we were on our way. But within moments the captain said we were leaving...we could see the school of "Jacks" there and couldn't understand why. Some men had caught some nice" Red Eye" fish which is good eating, kind of like red snapper. After that all we seemed to catch was "Sea Bass" and some pretty big ones, but they aren't in season until June 1st so they all had to go back in the ocean. Some big Red Snapper were caught but you can't keep them either so back in they went...one after one..fish were being thrown back into the ocean and it was a sad sight to see. Sometimes we would barely get our line completely out when the captain would say "pull them up", needless to say there was allot of grumbling going on. We did enjoy the ocean air and the beautiful day and every time we did have a fish on we hoped it wouldn't be a Sea Bass. Once a shark followed my bait all the way up to the boat and that caused a little excitement. Two men had large fish on but they both had brought their own fishing poles and hooks and lost them both...we never did get to see clearly what they were, but one of the mate's thought one was a Grouper for sure. So we jumped from spot to spot all day. One gentlemen who was 79 and had been a captain and professional fisherman sat beside us toward the end of the day and told us that the reason we left the 1st spot where we were catching "Keeper" fish was that because his friend had caught some big ones with his own rod that someone went to the captain and complained it wasn't fair(he also won the boat jackpot). Now Al said, he is a paying customer and you have the right to bring your own equipment, he also said that here in Florida that many of the captains on Party Boats move around because they say tourist don't want to catch allot of fish (they have no way to take them home). Now if all this is true I don't know, I just know that we would have liked to do more fishing and caught something we could keep. As it turned out only the on "Jack" Dusty got was a keeper, but had it been June 1st we would have had some fish to put in our freezer. It wasn't the fishing experience I had really wanted but it was a beautiful ride and for $50 a person, was quite a deal. Will just have to save our pennies and go on a smaller boat for bigger fish in the Keys next time. Well I will take you through the day in pictures, that will be easier to explain the whole day. Oh I know I forgot to write about last Saturday...well Dusty went to a Flea Market and I had to go to town and other then that we just chilled. One last thing before the pictures...The shuttle Launch has been put off til at least May 8th, I know the safety of the crew is more important them my disappointment :(