Southern Snowball Fight
Ok, so day two started of better than not, weather was flat, warm, sunny,
Ocean looked like the blue glass of a bottle of tequila, what flavor was that adorning the sports bar at the hatteras house, who knows, but----top shelf folks,
And speaking of top shelf, the Chases’ showed up-Harley style,
Yes, they drove the Harley all the way from Michigan. They got hung up in Jacksonville with crazy Charlie, and Chris said, I cannot do this, we will never make it to key west by the tournament, and it is a long scary and quite dangerous endeavor, sorry Jan, we must hold up here and just go to Daytona for a day. Of course, Jan said sure, then apparently the story goes as such:
One of the other hog riding folks, said,
well Sally, if you can’t do it then you should not. Chris was perplexed, and lay awake all night pondering the question,
Had he become an yuppie yankee named Sally?Where were guts, glory, and a sense of wild abandon for a high seas adventure?
They got on and rode hard, and manged to get to Key West just before 5 am and got on the boat,
Let the fun begin!
We cruised past the marquesa rocks at lightening speed, and watched as the full moon in the sky be replaced by the orange fire sun coming up over the horizon. It was quite amazing to see a nighttime rainbow called a full moon over the water at 4 am and listening to the local rooster squawk-very cool! We then began having the same luck as the previous day, and decided to go for hero or zero, and just get out of the pack of boats and go farther, and then a bit farther, and find that goliath kingfish we had seen in January, there was only one spot to find it and we went. We saw good fish caught but were yet again, luckless and fishless, so go farther!
We found a little spot with a just a few other boats, and began just wailing the fish, though still small, it was fun. We then had a hit, probably 50 feet down, SMACK! This fish was cruising, Mike had the rod as we were alternating angler duties as my foot was still mostly broken, and we were catching so many fish. The fish ran us almost 2 miles-we called one of the other boats, a friend, and asked him had he seen or caught any big bull sharks or amberjacks, he said, no, just big kingfish! Mike kept putting pressure on it, this was one big fish! The fight went on for almost 45 minutes, then the truth, we saw the big whitish grey mass begin to surface,
CRAP another bull shark, maybe 10 foot, maybe just shy of a million pounds, and still swimming, leave it to us to catch the biggest crap fish while everyone else caught good fish.
There was actually the Mad Fin Shark tournament going on,
Guess we should have put a few bucks in that entry also, we would have won by a landslide!
Last few minues we hook a decent fish, 26 pounds or so, not really decent in these waters, but it beat day one,
We took it to weigh in, and found an hour wait in the harbor.
Fortunately, our monkeys had gone and bought a bag of 100 balloons,
So we spent our time filling them up and hiding them under the gunnels,
We pulled up close to our buddy Big Bird, aka C K Blanton aka Charlie aka My Boat out of murrles inlet and dude responsible for our electronics and music system on the boat,
I said ‘let me get a photo of your team with your new silk team shirts on’
They looked so cute and innocent as they got together and smiled,
Then gary, jimmyjam, chris and jan came out from behind the console and absolutely nailed them with about a quarter of the balloon ammunition!
We soaked ‘em!
They quickly retaliated with the same, only they had a slingshot and had a little more firing range, but no aim. All the boats were honking and laughing as we continued the pirate attack, probably the most fun I have ever had on the boat not winning----comradery and giggles, though I have been warned for the set up that paybacks are gonna be brutal-
Bring it on boys!Next event, this week, entertaining my niece Erica and her roomie from Bowling Green University for spring break!
Next fishing tournament, Miami, march 25ish!
Stay tuned fish folks!
hey, if you get a chance,
nail someone with a water balloon
or an open cold hose,
smiles-
skk
