Staycation

I had 5 for a little staycation in North Side for the night, Hayley, Emily, Katherine, Justin and Hunter.

Checked out a good fishing spot to come back too, unfortunately we caught nothing.

But Hunter and Justin were more successful in the pond, they managed to catxh quite few Tillapia!

By The Sea

Hayley and Emily decided to open a restaurant "By the Sea". So Wednesday evening they fed 24 guests with a little help from family and friends down at Granny's beach.

The setting was fabulous and the food and service first class. However, Hayley has informed me she is no longer interested in the restaurant business (Glad we got that one and horses out of the way early on) :-)

"Adventure" Island

The girls slept in too late for Adventure Island so Hunter and I set out on our own adventure. Way down the network of inlets we caught two Greenback minnows (they look like baby Mullet to me).
We also saw some weird stingrays, lots of fish and birds and got some much-needed excersise!

Good Luck Charm

We didn't take our good luck charm fishing and as a result ended up with a beautiful day but no legal fish.
The spanish mackerel gave us a hard time and we never landed one. Just one snook and one salt-water catfish made it to the boat. But there was lots to see, lots of bites, just not as productive as our previous trip.

Back home it was an evening in the pool but again the lightening has moved in to dampen the 4th of July celebrations. We are going out to dinner anyhow....

Evening

After shopping all afternoon the kayaks again saw action.
The tide was high and there were some huge manatees.

Then the racoons came out.

And the models hit the pool!

Kayaking

Finally made it out kayaking, that's "our" house in the background.
We came across a bunch of Manatees, they were very friendly, almost too friendly! When you are sitting in a little piece of plastic below water level and they suddenly pop up and blow it can be somewhat unnerving!

My pros were up to the task thanks to all the practice at Granny's. Wish we could have done this sooner, think we will be back out this evening.

Fishing

Another rainy, cloudy morning but we took a chance and went fishing anyhow. Captain Mark turned out to be a good choice, he knew lots of spots and had all types of live bait. Unfortunately we had to weave around the Bay dodging storm clouds. First catch was a Ladyfish (on the first cast), the second was this beautiful Snook. There is a ban on keeping Snook right now so he was returned safely to his home.
We caught and kept our next two legal-size Redfish, then Hunter landed this monster which we released.

Then the storm moved in and we returned to shore untill it passed. Then back out we went, even though someone was ready just in case it came again!

We caught and released a few more Redfish, saw lots of interesting sights (even a dolphin), then returned to shore where Captain Mark cleaned our catch. Dinner tonight: Fresh Redfish! :-)