Normal

Well - back to normal life.

The sun was out, it was a nice cool day, and there were only regular commercials on the TV. It was actually a really nice day here.

In addition to this Skipper The Cat has decided that he is not getting enough attention, or costing enough money. In response to this he became allergic to something. Maybe food, maybe fleas - who knows. But he is scratching the shit out of himself. There is a place on his neck where he scratched himself raw, He has scratched his ears, he licks himself a lot creating thin hair spots, his lips are puffy, and there is a spot on his chin that is scratched as well.

Great. He would have made a lousy alley cat. Good thing he ended up living here.

A lone flea was spotted on Fred. So it is possible the fleas are back. I use the anti-flea stuff, but once the fleas are gone I stop using it. I figure the fewer chemicals I use on the cats the better. Plus it saves a few bucks.

Anyhow Skipper has to see the vet today. He will get a shot that will make him stop scratching and licking himself. And I suppose that Ill get more of that once a month flea stuff. And Ill hope it is actually fleas he is allergic to.

So that will be fun. Skipper LOVES to go for car rides. He howls the whole way, in a very frantic fashion. Turning the stereo up is futile. He will only shut up if I stick my fingers through the door of the cat carrier. But then I have to drive down the road, one hand contorted so it is behind me with my fingers stuck in a cat cage door - leaving only one other hand for steering.

Making turns is fun. I have to use my knees.

Luckily for me, I have experience using my knees to steer. Do not ask why, that is another crazy story. But it really helps if you need to do something else while driving. Like for example, eat a cheeseburger. Or read a road map. Or look for something you lit on fire then dropped on the floorboard of the car. Or whatever.

Anchor Steam Brewery makes a darn good porter. Just throwing that out there. Sierra Nevada Brewing Company also makes a darn good porter. Ill have to get more of the Anchor Steam stuff and compare it head to head with the Sierra Nevada to determine which is better. It will be a close call.

I got a fishing spy report. Someone caught TWO dolphin. Dolphin! this time of year? I thought it was over for dolphin till next summer. Guess not! So I need to try to get out there so I can continue my streak of not catching anything.

When I go fishing, the fish are safe.

It is also getting VERY CLOSE to everglades season. But nobody wants to go to Shark Valley. It is only a 14 mile bike ride on pavement! That is not too bad. My lazy ass can do it. So what is their problem?

Fishing Master

Behold! I have mastered the art of fishing!


No fish were harmed in the taking of this picture. The fish was released and swam away.

Promised Photos

I think I remember saying something about pictures from Saturday!! So here are some.

Just to recap - for Christmas I got an Olympus SW790. As far as digital cameras go it is unimpressive. In fact, I got used to a much nicer Sony camera, so going to the Olympus was a downgrade.

BUT the Olympus offers one really cool feature. It is waterproof to 10 feet. There is also a housing that is good to 131 feet. Ill probably think about getting that thing at some point. But not now.

Now being waterproof to 10 feet means I can use it on the surface. No problem. It laughs at rain. It also laughs at spray. This is why I wanted it. It is a tough little point and shoot simple to use digital camera.

So for all those features Ill take a hit on picture quality. It is an acceptable trade off. I am not a photo professional anyway.

So here it goes! The first underwater photos taken with the Olympus camera!


I have no idea what that blurry part in the corner is all about. My best guess is there was an air bubble on the lens or something. What you can see is sand (light areas) some sea fans (they are there) and even a few fish. Reef fish. Probably the fish that stole my bait.

The original photo is much larger. But it is also over 2 megs. So I made it smaller. But like I said before, the camera does not take the greatest pictures but it also does not come with a Nikon digital SLR price tag!

But if it were the original size you could see more stuff in there. Mostly the small fish. Very grainy but you can pick em out.

This is another photo. There are more sea fans and some other soft corals as well. I think there are also some sponges. And small bait stealing fish. But you can see there is more than sand on the bottom. All kinds of stuff.

Now you may be asking yourself - is everything so blue? No. Not really. There is all kinds of colors there. You just can not see it! Water absorbs light. The deeper you go the less light there is. At some point you can no longer see the sun.

But the light is not absorbed all at once! The water filters out all the colors starting with red. Just a few feet underwater and red looks purplish-black. Orange is the next color to be absorbed, followed by yellow, green, blue, and so on.

This is why the deep sea appears so darn blue! The white light enters the water, and by the time it is reflected back all that is left is blue, indigo, and violet.

So this is why the pictures are so green / blue balanced. And this is also why underwater photography gets so expensive. You need a powerful underwater flash unit to provide enough light to bring out the true colors. The weak built in flash on my camera is just not going to do it.

In this photo, the blurry stuff is back! I really have to figure out what that is all about. But the bottom is there! You can still see stuff. More assorted soft corals. Pretty neat.

So all things considered, the camera did well. It is really not an underwater camera, it is a land camera that happens to be waterproof to 10 feet and can work underwater. It does OK for what it is.

And I did not want it for use underwater anyway. I got it because I could use it and not worry if I spilled a beer on it. Or if it rains. Or if it gets splashed. Or if it gets sprayed. Or whatever. The camera would be OK.

And so I can take photos like this.



This picture was taken while I was floating around behind the boat. There was a current running. Not too strong, but not really something I felt like swimming against. So that yellow line you see is attached to my ring buoy. This way I can put one of my legs through the ring, and then I can just hang out and relax. I do not have to exert any effort to swim and the line prevents the current from taking me too far away. And I can pull myself back to the boat using the line so I do not have to swim against the current at all.

And since the camera is waterproof I can jump in with it! No problem.

As you can see, at this moment my dad is not catching anything. But the boat looks sharp! As you can see there is plenty of fishing gear in the various rod holders. Just no fish.

Still Catch Free

I think I mentioned something about fishing the other day.

Well I went! This time my dad went. The conditions were perfect. Well offshore the seas were nothing. Mere ripples. It was FLAT offshore. Biscayne Bay was rougher than it was 3 miles out. I blame all the boat traffic in the bay for that. Approaches to some marinas were horrible.

But as usual - no fish. There was a good strike, but the leader wire gave out and the hooks slipped off. Oh well. One of these days Ill get something.

We tried trolling and drifting. Nothing.

So I headed into shallower waters and hit the patch reefs. I caught some fish, but nothing worth keeping. Some grunt, a few short yellow tails, a VERY short strawberry grouper, a wrasse, and more grunt. At least I was catching stuff.

I also took the opportunity to go swimming. THAT was nice. I need to forget about so many fishing missions and do more snorkeling missions.

But today is Mother's Day. So no more boat stuff. The plan for today is hit up Gulfstream Park for some sort of brunch or whatever they are having. It was my dad's idea. I went along with it.

It will be nice. I suppose. The para mutuals were all given a nice face lift thanks to the voters approving Vegas style slot machines.

So......will there be any video poker? Maybe a little. And maybe not. I am really not that into gambling anyway. It is fun so long as you are winning, but when you are not winning it gets shitty and boring VERY fast.

OH YEA!!!! I got some underwater photos of the patch reef fishing area. Ill post them in the next day or two.

Streak Ended

Some of you may be wondering about the results of the last boat trip.

So here is it. I did manage to catch one fish. In the process I used up about 20 gallons of fuel. So it was a fairly expensive fish - all things considered.

I caught a porgie. I think. It looked like a porgie. I think. Anyhow, supposedly porgies are in the grunt family. Again - I think. I am not sure.

But I caught one. ONE.

Now of course, this is one more fish than I expected to catch. If you go out and expect to catch a lot of fish then most of the time you are going to be in a bad mood. If you go out and expect to have a few beers and spend some time in the boat and listen to some music then you will at least have that going. And if you manage to catch a fish - it is like a bonus!

Anyhow, I left the marina and ran out across the bay and through Biscayne Channel (through the famous Stiltsville) and then to the Fowley Rocks lighthouse. And then off into the deep stuff. I trolled some ballyhoo and an artificial lure. Nothing. No hits. Nothing at all.

Thinking "this sucks" and realizing that if I have to concentrate on trolling and looking for birds and stuff floating in the water really put a damper on time I could be spending consuming beer, I switched to drifting. Nothing. But at least drifting does not use up gas!

So I ran to the Hawk Channel and then south to some patch reefs. After dropping the anchor and deploying all the chum I caught the porgie.

By the way - "chum" means all the shit in the freezer that you are afraid to eat. What is that??? Is it pork??? Beef??? Chicken??? Well whatever it is, it is encased with ice. What will you findif you dare defrost that thing? How long has it even been in the freezer anyway???

And then there is the mystery stuff wrapped in the foil. All you know if that you do not remember when you put it in there.

And of course, there is all the stuff saved just for fishing. Shrimp heads and tails, bits and pieces of fish, and so on.

So all that stuff went overboard. HEY! That thing in the plastic bag was a meatball! How about that? I was going to guess "boiled egg".

By the way, old pork tenderloins stay on the chum hook better than old cuts of steak. And pork sinks, beef floats. Neither attract fish very well. But the frozen inedible shrimp parts did the trick. I think.

And now the freezer is mostly empty. There are some frozen veggies in there, but they only attract sea cows, and you are not allowed to keep those. You have to throw em back.

I really need a stainless steel boat chum grinder. You attach them to a downrigger plate (which came installed on the boat) and then you cram the gross stuff in the top of the grinder, turn the handle, and fish attracting paste is dumped overboard. But this is low on the list. I already have a garage sale blender that is used for blending disgusting stuff into a paste, which is then frozen into blocks and tossed into the ocean in a feeble attempt to catch fish.

Sunday Plan Of Action

OK the plans are set. In stone. No turning back now!!!

High tide is at 8 AM. More or less. So Ill be at the ramp between 7 and 8 AM. More or less. Then I leave the dock on a slack / outgoing tide. To the offshore hunting grounds.

Once the depth finder reads about 250 feet I look at the water to note its color. It should be deep blue. And then the fun begins!!!!

I have to look for birds. Birds indicate fish. I also have to look for crap floating in the water. Crap floating in the water (bodies, sea weed, shipping pallets, tarps, whatever) attract fish.

Anyhow - spy reports have indicated the following three species are hitting the bait.

1. King Mackerel.

2. Black Fin Tuna.

3. Dolphin


Ill take any of the above, but if I could pick I would pick the tuna first, then the dolphin. A bonus yellow fin tuna would totally rock! But the yellow fin is a long shot. A very VERY long shot. Even longer than anything listed above. To be honest, I would stand a better chance finding sunken Spanish treasure than a yellow fin tuna.

Actually catching anything is sort of a shot in the dark. My track record for catching anything is dismal.

Either there are no fish in the ocean, or I suck at fishing. I am still trying to figure out which is the case.

Inshore Day

What an action packed day I have planned!

And of course by "action packed" I mean "try to catch some fish". Now under normal conditions missions of this type are less than action packed. The last few fishing trips have not exactly been productive.

The fishing team logo pretty much accurately summarizes the last few excursions. Can't catch shit. Well this is not exactly entirely true. I did catch some shit, but it was not worth keeping. There was the one snapper that was just a little short that was tossed back. And of curse I was able to catch a bunch of small grunt for bait. I can usually always catch bait fish using the secret weapon. And what is that?

1/4 stick of TNT tossed overboard with about 25 feet of wire attached to the detonator. The resulting explosion causes all sorts of interesting things to float to the surface. Some of it makes decent bait, the rest makes good chum.

Or I can use the sabiki. This is a series of hooks on one length of fishing line. I put a little tiny piece of shrimp on each hook and drop it over. Within a minute I have two or three bait fish on the line. Reel em in and place them into the live well. Repeat as needed.

Conditions are supposed to be crappy. 20 knot east winds. Seas are supposed to be 7 - 9 feet in the gulf stream, 4 - 6 feet near shore. Needless to say, I will be avoiding that mess. I will stay in the bay, where things will be a little more sane. East winds in the north bay are not a problem. There is a land mass (Miami Beach) that blocks the direct path to the open sea. So it will be breezy, but not really that bad in the bay as long as I stay away from the exposed areas. Not a problem.

The target fish for this excursion are sea trout and possibly snapper. Or whatever I can catch.

As of right now it does not seem like there is a lot of wind. So tomorrow IF the wind forecast is way off then it may be possible to get outside the bay. But honestly I do not think the forecast will be that off. If they are calling for 20 knot winds then the winds will be at the very least 10 knots.

It will be an inshore day.

What I Learned This Week,

Standard method used to catch Kingfish:

1. Make a kingfish rig, which is just three hooks attached together. Do this by opening up the hook eye just a little, putting tghe barb of another hook through it, then closing the eye back up. Like this. Use 5/0 size hooks.
2. Attach the rig to a leader - wire or mono, your choice. I usually go with wire as my reels are spooled with mono line anyway.

3. Put a somewhat heavy sinker on the line. Say 2 ounces. Do not tie the sinker to the line, just thread the line through the sinker so it can slide up and down the line.

4. Attach the three hook rig to the end of the line. I am a big fan of the clench knot because it is easy to tie and fairly strong.

5, Now for the fun part. Find a boat and head out to the offshore fishing grounds. About three miles off Key Biscayne is a good place to try. You want to be in water 120 - 130 feet deep. No deeper than 140 feet. Turn off the engine after you set your drift.

6. Rig a sardine to your triple hook setup. Each hook should be in the bait.

7. Drop the bait to the bottom. When the sinker hits the bottom, close the reel and give it 5 or so cranks so that your bait is just off the bottom.

8. Watch the depth sounder. If you drift into shallower water, remember to give some more cranks to the reel to keep your bait just off the bottom. If you drift into water shallower than 80 feet or deeper than 140 feet move the boat and reset your drift.

9. Catch a fish. In theory. In reality this may or may not happen. It is hard to predict. Sometimes you catch the fish, and sometimes you just go out and not catch anything and your GPS and anchor windlass breaks and you say a few bad words but then you figure out how to get the anchor line free of the windlass so you do not have to cut the line and lose your anchor so you feel a little better but still it SUCKS ASS that the windlass is not working, and it really sucks mega ass that the GPS stopped working.

Something else happens today. I can not exactly remember what that is however. I must be getting older or something (little hint there). They say the memory is the first thing to go. But now I will not forget the standard method to catch a kingfish, because I wrote it down. Of course I might forget I wrote it down in which case it will not do me a whole lot of good.

So far 2008 is sucking. I realize that we are only 11 days into the year, but the 11 days have sucked. Things better pick up and stop sucking or else I will be VERY GRUMPY this year
That is me. Being grumpy. Cause so far this year is sucking.

I Am A Winner.

Awarded by
Emma to Lazy Iguana

Behold the award I won. This is a fairly cool blog award. Ever see it before? I have not. This is a blog award I could use, because I am almost dry. I have some Sam Adams Winter Later hanging out, but I will need some more in the next week or two. Unless I get a "bunch of beer". Which apparently is exactly what happened.

In other news, not only is the boat GPS Chart Plotter not functional, but now the anchor windlass decided to take a crap. So much for "the boat not costing a lot to operate". I was just telling someone that. See the boat has an engine that is not a gas pig. It uses DFI technology and really is good on gas. For a boat anyway. In the past two trips I used up a whole whopping 7 gallons. I was not running very much, drift fishing and/or "drop the anchor and sit in one place" fishing is economical.

But on the last trip out the GPS stopped working. Now I do not know what the cost to repair it is. And I do not know if it is going to be a warranty job or not. But if it has to be replaced - it will be around $400 for the slightly upgraded CP180i. The exact same plotter is not being made anymore.

SO MUCH FOR BEING ECONOMICAL TO USE!

And on the Wednesday afternoon trip out - the windlass had a problem and now does not work. I think it may have joined the writer's union.

IF the windlass is dead, then that is another $500 or $600 to replace. So if it is in fact not working it will just remain not working for a while. I can anchor without it. It is just a hassle.

Did I say the boat is economical to use? Let me rephrase that. The boat is a hole in the water which you are supposed to fill with money - but it does not use up a lot of gas.

BOAT = "break out another thousand". Which is about what the two broken items would cost to replace if I have to buy new shit.

So all that sucks. But it is part of the game. Nothing lasts forever. It just sucks when more than one thing craps out at the same time.

But hey! At least the outboard still runs! That is a good thing. The engine is very expensive. The boat can be used without the GPS plotter and also without the windlass. But the boat has little use at all without an engine. So yea, it is not really that bad.

I did not catch anything. But I am getting closer. There were two strong hits, probably kingfish. But due to whatever reason, they threw the hooks.
The law of averages says that sooner or later I will catch something worth catching. Maybe some blackfin tuna? That would be nice.

And I think I can revive the windlass. The switch could be bad. The circuit breaker could have burned out. Both are cheap fixes. If the motor is bad, then I can probably just replace that. Or get it repaired at an electric motor repair place.

I am going to try to jump the switch, bypassing the circuit breaker. If that works then the breaker is bad and $15 later I can have another one. If the thing still does not work then I can voltage test the leads going to the windlass. If they are not hot then the switch is bad. Order another one and it is all good. If the power leads read hot and it still does not work......well lets worry about that if that turns out to be the case.

I may need another (or my first) Bush "tax cut" to fix it. Of course, if I made enough to get the Bush "tax cut" then I would just be able to buy new stuff right now and have it sent here express overnight delivery, get it the next day, and then have someone install it. Or better yet, just go buy a new boat. Why not.

Night Mission

It seems I had some time off. So.....it was time for........a fishing trip! Yes, fishing. Why the hell not? My lame friends (who may or may not read this - but of they do they know who I am talking about) are not really into the whole "fishing" thing. They are more into the "drinking" thing. While beer is an important part of a fishing trip, a fishing trip is not exactly a drinking mission.

Actually I do have a group of friends into the whole boat thing and probably fishing as well. Maybe I should kick over some rocks huh? Ill see them later today anyway, so I can always ask.

But for now - I have a good fishing hookup. One of my friends who moved out of State has family that still live here. And it just so happens that this person has a father use used to be a captain on a fishing charter boat. Now how about that? Dude is always up for a trip, and he knows what he is doing. I have no clue. I do not know any really good spots (except for one or two places to catch bait). I do not know anything about bait that is not shrimp, squid, or mullet. Artificial lures? Got em - have no idea when to use em. So it is good to have someone on board who used to captain a fishing charter boat. It was actually a "party" boat, as opposed to a pure charter boat. Party boats typically just leave the dock if so many people show up. On a party boat, you may not even know anyone else fishing with you. Pretty much whoever shows up at the docks and forks over the fee gets on board.

Charter boats usually go out with smaller groups. You have more control. You can ask the captain what fish are running, then pick the fish you want to target. Of course this is not cheap, a 6 person charter may end up costing everyone $300. For a day. It all depends on the size of the boat and how much diesel it is going to consume.

You think fuel for your car is expensive - try buying it at a marina! As a general rule at a marina add $1 - $2 per gallon onto the cost. At least.

Anyway none of this is important. What is important is that the new fishing hookup knows how, when, and where to fish. Very useful info.

This trip landed a mutton snapper. Not a terribly large snapper, but it was at least legal size. I got a photo of it, but the camera is way over there and I am way over here and it is 5 AM and it is time to get off the computer because the day is drawing to an "end".

This is how a night shift life works. When your day is starting, or about to start - my day is over. Or almost over. Or something like that.

I did not catch the snapper, but it is in my freezer. I did catch a few grunt bait fish. Most were released unharmed at the end of the mission.

Fishing buddy also caught a moray eel. I had never seen one of those things caught before.

The GPS chart plotter died. I do not know what is up with that. It was working all the way to spot 1. Once there the GPS was turned off to conserve battery power. When spot 1 was done, the GPS powered on. But when I was running in plane I noticed that the speed on the GPS was 6 knots. I was going at least 20 knots. The GPS was frozen like a Windows XP machine that is not running Service Pack 2. Even worse - it was frozen like a Windows ME machine. The GPS would not power off. So I pulled the power plug. I reconnected the power and it would not turn on. I tried everything. The connections looks good. I tried to jiggle the wires. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the power cable. Nothing. Not good. The GPS may need to be sent off for repair. Or it may be dead. I hope it is OK. I will try to fiddle with it later.

The wind was too strong to even try to go out of the bay. Seas were forecast to be 2 - 4 feet, but if I had to guess I would say 4 - 6 feet was more likely. The winds have been blowing from the east or northeast for at least a few days. Close to a week. And the winds were stronger a few days ago. It was going to be rough.

Next trip may see fairer weather and therefore allow me to hit other spots in deeper water.

One Less Thing In The Yard.

Too much Toto is a bad thing, so I put up new Iguana Music. I do not know exactly who recorded this version - and it only contains one stanza. But it is all I can find. So if you have a better version, let me know. Ill get tired of this Iguana Music soon and put something else up.

According to my sources, June is smack in the middle of hot dolphin fishing season! And now that I have a boat with 44 inches of freeboard at the bow - I can go offshore to look for the buggers. I could go offshore with the old boat, but the cat I have now can go further offshore and is safer due to the increased freeboard. And the beam is wider. All this means it is a better offshore boat. So one of these days soon I want to try to catch some darn fish. I can get well offshore now - out to the shipping lanes if I want to.

I think the old boat is sold. Some dudes came by and left a deposit on it. The screwy thing is that they do not seem to want to water test it. I think they might plan to throw another engine on it. They could have another engine already. If this is the case then it would explain why they do not care to put the boat in the water before they buy - they are going to re-power it anyway.

If they do, they screwed the pooch. The engine on the old boat IS old, but it runs great. How old? It was made in 1986. Reagan was in office and everyone was dancing safely in parachute pants. Michael Jackson was not a weirdo, just a rich eccentric normal looking dude. The Soviets were going to nuke us and the Taliban were our good close personal buddies and partners with the CIA. Junk bonds were king and greed was good. Yes, the world was a pretty crazy place. It still is.

The old engine still has the original oil injection system hooked up and working. A lot of people disconnected them, but this one still has it. The 2 cycle oil sits in one tank, the gas in another tank, and the engine mixes the two as needed.

A compression test done yesterday gave all 6 cylinders a reading of 120. That is excellent. So if the buyers just toss the engine and hang another one on, they will be getting rid of a perfectly good engine.

But none of this is my problem. Let em do whatever they want. I tried to tell them that the engine is perfectly good but I do not think they believe me. They turned down multiple offers to water test the boat. I can show them that it really does hit 40 mph - a bad engine would not push the boat that fast. But they said "we do not need to do that" and "that is OK" so whatever.

Now I will have the flow to buy the fish finder I want to get. The old fish finder is going with the old boat. I did not feel like pulling the transducer cable and patching the screw holes in the transom. That is a pain in the ass. Plus the old fish finder was only $150 or something. The new boat is getting a nicer sonar unit. I took enough stuff off the old boat to ensure boat continuity, I do not really need the Humminbird Matrix 17 fish finder.