A Big Thanks to Sean & Brooks for letting us rent the house on the canal! I'll do all the family sight seeing stuff in this thread & the fishing pictures in the Monsters section! Let's start with the plane crash & how Chris ended up on the TV News. It ended a night of fishing for us because the Fire & Rescue Team took command of the pier... and we had fresh Cravelle Jacks for bait...
Here's the Newspaper story that got greatly modified... the guy wrote down all kinds of notes but obviously didn't remember all the details right... LOL!!! I wish I'd of caught the sharks but it was a couple of other guys! LOL!!!:
And here's the TV News Broadcast where they interviewed Chris in one part... "we were waiting on bites" LOL!
http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e74/mikejballcorp/Florida2008/?action=view¤t=2008_0329 Florida080072.flv
Now for some sight seeing, the 1st picture was for Chris... LOL!!
Life at the pier & Sharkey's
Florida was beautiful & even the big storm & rough seas on Sunday & Monday were awesome. We were out fishing on the pier with high seas (9 to 10 foot waves) and the Sharks were biting! There was even a guy that had one on & lost it while the whole Fire & Rescue take over was going on! Here's a short video of when I was talking with Joe & some more pictures.
http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e74/mikejballcorp/Florida2008/?action=view¤t=2008_0329 Florida080071.flv
Our Panama Jack Hats I picked up at a great price for me & Chris. I'm sitting in one of those LoungeAir Chairs and have the body harness on waiting for a big Shark to bite!
Ok, now for some more from what it was like having Gators & Manatees out in the canal in our back yard! On the last day, after cleaning Red Groupers & heads/guts going into the canal, the big gator showed up. He had to be a 12 footer & over 1,000 lbs. He was friggin huge & at one point he just popped his head up right off our dock & stared at us like he was either waiting for us to feed him or jump in or something.... and we didn't even see him when we cruized the canal fishing out of the little boat... but we did see a great big monster Tarpon roll & Snook jumping but I never caught any of that on film... Seeing the Manatees right in our back yard was awesome to!
Momma & baby Manatee:
Pain in the azz bait & fish stealing Pellicans... both Sherry & I hooked one at different times & I had to help unhook multiple other ones out on the pier for other folks but was able to get nice safe clean releases each time...
And here's a cruize on the canal where we even saw the Blues Brothers and some smaller gators:
And there was this beautiful old tree right down the street from our house that an old Russian Artist asked if they wouldn't cut it down & would let him carve it after the tree had died. He carved King Neptune, Dolphins & a Mermaid into it's trunk:
It was awesome!!! Now to add some fish pictures
Let's start off with all the fish we wanted to catch:
Then the fish we watched being caught and/or saw after the catch:
A couple of nice Red Grouper that our neighbor Charlie caught!
Then the Sharks caught out off Sharkey's pier!
And now, the fish we did catch! I had no idea that a Jack fought so hard! I thought I had a King Mackeral or something on the 1st one!
We landed 5 Jacks total & lost about 6 more. Chris lost one at one point that was a real hog. It got off right as he was bringing it into the rocks...
Can't forget Grandpa's catfish off of our dock on the canal! The Wife & Grandparents also caught more cats, a gar & a snook while we were off Shark fishing, with the camera...
And we also caught a bunch of pin fish & sand perch on hooks and got some more with the throw net. And there was this one gator that Chris wanted to fish for... but after he saw the even bigger gator, he thought twice about that! LOL!!!
And now to cover our trip to the Beach!
We had a blast making a trip to the beach with Sean, Brooks & Kaz! It was absolutely beautiful!
And then I think Sean put the Sharks to sleep with his snoring! LOL!!!
It was an Awesome trip and now Chris wants to get a LoungAir chair!
Thanks again Guys!!!
In addition, here's links to where Sean & Brooks hang out (their web-sites!)
http://www.fishinggonewild.com/forum/index.php
http://www.landbasedsharkfishing.com./forum/index.php
I took a trip to NY to go Turkey hunting, the 1st week of May, with some friends and to fish for ocean run stripers on the Hudson river as a bonus. We hunted up East of Albany in the mountains near the Massachusettes border. Considering that I've never been a Turkey hunter, it was pretty wild that I got a nice Tom, watched a total of 5 get dusted during the week, one had a triple beard & also including one where someone snuck in from the other side of a hill and dusted one that I was getting ready to shoot... not exactly cool when you consider he was shooting in our general direction... he heard us calling & the gobbler gobbling as he was driving by on a road... I also got to hunt with a Fish & Wildlife officer from Mass. on Saturday, I wish he'd been with us when that road hunter snuck in... Anyways, it was an awesome trip!
And, for those that aren't squimish about blood, here's the video of the last few seconds of my turkeys life!
http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a110/mrjbigfoot/?action=view¤t=Picture015.flv
And here's some of the fishing!
It was an awesome trip and I owe a big thanks to Eric/aka: Spysar!!
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