Playing Hookie, Literally

The Moose and I decided to play hookie yesterday, literally.   Deep sea fishing has been on my bucket list for some time.  What luck!  Living Social ran a special deal for a deep sea fishing company in Cape Canaveral, the Miss Cape Canaveral.  I purchased the tickets back in July and we decided to wait as long as possible, going in to the late hurricane season.  We had a great day.

Seas were 2-4' as we headed out to the reef.  The reef is about 14 miles out from the coast of Cape Canaveral, and once anchored the waves were down to 1-3 feet.  Although the sun was hot, I now look like a raccoon, it was a great day, and no rain.

The weather was great, but the fishing was terrible.  We made our first of three anchors, and the only thing coming up were sharks.  They make a mess of every ones lines and we spent the better part of the morning untangling our gear.  The only other thing we were catching at this point was an occasional sea bass.

But, the sea bass had to be thrown back in, they were no longer in season.  I asked one of the crew if they had luck with sea bass when they were in season, his reply; "nope, could hardly catch one, and if you did it had to be a min. of 13" long in order to keep it".  Do the fish know when they are being hunted, or does the government know, and some tree hugger somewhere makes the decision based on data to keep us from realizing fresh caught supper on the table?  Something seems fishy!

We pulled up anchor, headed to another fishing hole, and it seemed the sharks followed our boat, although one or two did catch a red snapper, but they had to go back in.  There is a ban on bringing those home.

Our final hole resulted in very little, a couple of trigger and lizard fish, otherwise nothing until the end, when those pesky shark found us again!  Fishing seemed pointless.  By the end of the day, I had enough of other peoples kids running back and forth.

For me it was more for the experience of it all.  We got away from the emails and phones.  Although I should mention, that here at our house we do not get a cell phone signal, but 14 miles off the coast we sure did.  The phones kept ringing, go figure. 

For the Moose, he wanted to see "where the fish are" for future reference.  It basically seemed like there were no fish to be had, and traveling 14 miles off the coast is not possible unless you have a very large boat, which we don't.  He also noticed that there were not any other boats in the area.  What does that tell you;  either they don't have the time to fish, or the fish are not there to be had. 

Along with the great weather, we did get to see dolphins, a giant sea turtle and a giant sting ray leaping out of the water!  Another item checked off the bucket list.