gatorcast from paul smith

Yesterday I went fishing on Newnan’s Lake with my neighbor Wes.  We had a great time and caught this little guy.  We think it is a mudfish and helped him out by releasing him. Wes 

Today Cameron, Evan, Bobby, Rosemary, Rob and I went to Black Point Marina in Cutler Bay.  It is within a bicycle ride from my sister’s house.   I used to fish here as a kid, way before they built these facilities.

Here is Cam and Evan fishing off the main canal coming off Biscayne Bay.  We waited until the end of the day to have better luck with the fish.  We used frozen shrimp because the tackle store was all out of live bait.  Apparently they went through 4,000 shrimps between 6am and 11 am.

See Mt. Trashmore in the background.

Evan caught the first fish. 

 I think it was a snapper, but not sure. It had light blue lines under it’s eyes, like warpaint.

 Bobby helped dad fish.

Evan and I got up early this morning, eat egg ham & cheese sandwiches, took a quick dip in the pool, then headed for Orange Park.  We packed a lunch and brought our fishing gear.   We didn’t plan it, but took Big Paul to lunch at Chili’s and had a great visit.    Paul got a new toy that we just had to play with for a while. It was a new Garvin GPS handheld.   After several miles of frustration we finally figured out you had to put ‘up’ the antenae for it to actually plot your location on the earth.  We took a trip through Green Cove Springs, over the St. Johns River using the Shands Bridge.     We took some pictures, watched the white caps on the river for a while then let the GPS guide us back to Paul’s.

After we dropped Paul off, Evan & I went back to Green Cove and checked out the city pier next the Spring Park.  It was nice and basically it convinced Evan it was time to fish.

   After losing the battle, I found a place to buy some frozen shrimp down the road.  We headed back to Shands bridge and decided to check out ’shands pier’ next door.   We didn’t catch anything (had a BIG blue crab on for a minute but it jumped off :> ), but had a great time and spent time together. We used three poles and had the ’shooting’ poles Rob & Rosie gave them for Christmas.

Here we are looking at the friendly Manatees…that decided to park it right next to us. 

Evan is a master now at casting and really likes to fish.   We headed home which took about in hour.    After a quick stop at Publix, we came full circle and we again jumped in the pool and started the grill.  

We ended our day by watching the 1st half of The Pirates of the Caribbean II.

“as i write this Evan just came out from Bed and announced he was going the throw up… he did…, boy what a day.. and now he is fine and says…’ i’m ok dad, I got it all out’    Yes we did.

Today I went to scope out some fishing spots near home.  This is Powers Park on Newnan’s Lake on the the east side of Gainesville.  I threw the pole in a couple of times but caught nothing.  Next time I will bring the boys.