~FISH~

We took off for some fishing off Anclote Key... killing some and keeping some others. Tarpon are one of those oily, inedible fish that no one wants to put into their mouth but are ever hunted. Fishing was great. Some of the monsters got on the line but I was after meat, not stuff to hang up. The only thing this critter managed to miss was the scale. I'm pretty sure that he was a keeper... pulled like a billfish... minimum 80 pounds or more. The trout were out in force from Captive on south, schooled up in shoals over the eel grass. For once in my life I managed to get home without getting sunburnt into a crisp but sore and willing to sit in a lawn chair out under the banyans until the snook stopped popping under the docks. Ah, old and tired and with just the right amount of double malt to slide an old man between the sheets.

Katie and the redhead both have said that I should either find a teaching job or go back to the office and write bonds. They're both afraid that if I don't find something to occupy my mind I'm gonna take off in the boat to points unknown. I admit that I'm getting restless and I'm about to start looking seriously for a place to light. I suspect that it's either that or I'm gonna have to go walkabout. I say that but I'm not sure that I'm ready for all the careful planning that would go into another circumnavigation. I'm afraid that without my daughter along as a ten year old first mate that I wouldn't have as much fun as I had on the first time around. I'd probably just be wandering around with wet clothes and no real mission. A job would change that. I just am not sure that taking on another group of nacent dreamers would would do the trick. Ah well, more old fart rambling. Killing fish is supposed to be a cure for that.

You tell me. Should I have dragged that tarpon into the boat and weighed the thing? It was a whopper. Of course, dragging the beasts over the gunnel usually bangs them up too much to keep them alive. I think that I'm tired of killing things. Even one of those prehistoric hunters, which once tried to kill me when I was a kid learning how to fly fish in the mouth of the Shark River... about ten miles from where this one was hooked. Hear that? It's the sound of death... just a whisper from one predator to another.

For Eric -- You've asked for more stories. This references the fishing between my dad and me.

Bob