On The Water

A friend of mine had a drag boat with a big chevy engine, the thing could haul azz...used it for skiing too. It sat very low in the water. He was stopped once and a big wake came over the stern and the boat sank. They hired someone to raise it up off the lake bed. They were always rebuilding it anyway, so it didn't much matter.
 
Where we launch on Lake Monroe is about 10 miles from here, then we usually cruise north from there. The St. John's River meanders back and forth across Florida and dumps into the Atlantic near Jacksonville. It's one of the few rivers in the world that flows north.
 
Must have been the day for it. My buddy Randy and I usually make our last mountain lake trip on Veterans day... But the weather was lousy and I was sick so we didn't go. The weather has been so warm and the snowline has retreated back up over 11,000 feet so we decided that we would try it today. We drove up to Ohaver lake at 9200 feet. It was about 90% iced over but there was some open water. The little bowl the lake nestles in was echoing with Weird groans from the ice. Eerie and interesting. We spent 3 hours in the tubes finning around, smoking cigars and catching fish in the bright cold sunshine.
You don't have to be crazy for this type of fishing but it probably helps.
 
Stumper said:
The little bowl the lake nestles in was echoing with Weird groans from the ice. Eerie and interesting. We spent 3 hours in the tubes finning around, smoking cigars and catching fish in the bright cold sunshine.
You don't have to be crazy for this type of fishing but it probably helps.
Click to expand...

Thats awesome J, I can close my eyes and picture a couple bearded grizzlers floating around in innertubes puffing stogies, telling stories and waiting for fishies to bite. Its a cool vision, one of those few times in a lifetime views. :D
 
Heck, I went with Justin to fish in the mountains in June and it was frikkin' cold! You're insane to go swimming around in ice water in November.
:|:
 
Hard to believe all those alligators!! I guess jumping out of the boat for an impromptu swim is out of the question?
 
Aw, gators are no hassle. Much, anyway.

I've swum with 'em plenty of times...but I stay out of the water if I see one over 12 feet.
 
I hear the ice is just about thick enough to get on walking, it will be about another month before they start to drive on it again. Early ice is usually the best fishing. I may have to try in a week or so. We need a few -20 degree nights to drive that ice down about a foot or two. If it gets up to 3 feet, I may take the motorhome and try an overnight fishing trip to one of the area lakes. I have seen D-6 Cats on them before in winter.
 
Burnham said:
Aw, gators are no hassle. Much, anyway.

I've swum with 'em plenty of times...but I stay out of the water if I see one over 12 feet.
Click to expand...

I was never really concerned by the ones you could see. It was the ones on the bottom or amongst the mangroves that freaked me out.
 
You're a braver man than I, Burnham. No way on God's green earth am I going swimming in that river with all those gators. Like Mike said, the ones on the surface or up on the bank aren't any problem. But when they see you coming, they dive and wait for you on the bottom. :O
 
Maybe just more foolish, Brian. Of course, when I was living and working in south Florida it was more than 30 years ago. Alligators were still federally listed as threatened, and although there were plenty of them, most were in the younger generation of the recovering population and a big one would have been 10 feet. Those critters have mostly been eating and growing ever since, and the number and overall average size of big gators has really grown.

It's amazing the difference between the sizes of a 8-9 foot gator and a 12 footer...way more than just length...they begin to really put on girth at about 10 feet, and a 14 footer will look like a battleship.

Like anything else, once you get used to working with them they don't intimidate as much. I had a summer job with Florida Game and Fish as a teenager...I captured and relocated many a gator from residential developments back in the mid 1970's.
 
Ok, I'm new here...
Mr. Bermie was a commercial fisherman so its not really fair...I spent a year fishing commercial with him before getting back to the plant stuff! Now we just fish for ourselves.

Picture one is a nice catch of:
puddingwife - the blue ones - best salted then boiled with potatoes, eggs, avodado and bananas (Sunday morning breakfast)
coney, barber - red - pan fried or baked
a slangdang - the long skinny one - pan fried
mackerel - really a 'little tunny' - breaded and pan fried or stuffed and baked
a nice jack - pan fried
a nice monkey rockfish - oh, so many ways to eat it!
Bottom fishing the edge two miles out

Picture two is a decent size wahoo...yes that's the rod in front..he likes light tackle. Trolling the edge, about two miles out...120'
 

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Do you catch those commercially with rod & reel or do they do some sort of trawl or line fishing?
 
Newfie said:
Do you catch those commercially with rod & reel or do they do some sort of trawl or line fishing?
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Everything commercial and recreational is either rod and reel or handline on the edge. That lot is just a few hours poking on the edge, trolling for the mackerel and wahoo with a Rapalla or Yo-zuri lure, then change the rig and drop down to the bottom for the rest.

Nets and pots are illegal here, except one or two fisherman who are allowed to net jacks, and bait fishermen, there are only a couple of those too.
Pots are only legal for lobster season and they are issued by the Fisheries department to a limited number of fishermen who get a permit by a lottery. At the end of the season the pots are returned to the gov't for storage.

Pots/traps were banned in the early 90's when the grouper fishery collapsed, and the by catch was mainly parrotfish. Parrotfish are essential for the health of the reef, they graze algae and in so doing scrape the coral/rock substrate, they poop sand, and leave nice little clean spots of rock for new coral polyps to settle out onto. With so many parrotfish and other grazers being caught our reef was being overwhelmed with algae. It is no longer the case, the stocks are well into recovery and we have some of the healthiest reef anywhere in the world now!

Bermuda regularly wins the global marlin tournaments with the largest blue marlins getting caught here, we beat Florida, Bahamas and Hawaii!!:P
 
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