Do I post or don’t I, very philosophical eh?? Weekend was not great not bad, but we live in paradise, so what the hey!
Forecast looked promising, calm winds, flat seas, summer solstice, everything going for us! So robin and I decided to run offshore on Saturday and make it a tagging day. We have a ton of fish in the freezer, so game plan was to put the first decent fish in the cooler, then tag and release the rest.
I am a member (?) I guess, participate in is probably better, the Dolphin research project. They send tags and cards, we tag and release fish, and I get access to their data. Pretty fascinating actually, these fish are world travelers. The fish we release here will be off North Carolina and Virginia in about a month. Then across the Atlantic, back down to the Caribbean, and eventually back to us again.
The seas were bumpier than expected, the ride out was pretty much into 2-3 foot chop, it stayed choppy all day and the ride back was also back into 2-3 foot chop! The bones are getting too old for the bounce.
First fish came early in 650 feet under some birds, tons I mean tons of weed everywhere, and it was all just scattered making the troll painful. We pretty much did the run and gun move and worked out beyond the wall looking for a better pattern of weeds to work.
Weed weed everywhere!
We picked up a dozen or so, and were able to get a tag in 8 of them. Ended up rolling out to over 1,800 feet which puts us 1/3 of the way to Cuba pretty much.
Paired up with some key west pinks and on the grill she went. boom! Deliciousness!
Impromptu hot Sunday! we jumped in the pool for a bit and made the call to take the skiff out. Ran out back for a couple hours basically baitfishing. Ended up catching 3 dozen ballyhoo….
And robin ruled the roost with this dandy mangrove snapper. 19 inches … excuse the poor picture!
The random post here will keep on going. Last week when the guys were here I noticed two broken rod guides on my heavy duty spinning rods. Time to break out the rod repair tools!
First step heat the epoxy a bit and cut and scrape the old guide off.
Then heat it up again and clean off old epoxy
Tape the new guide in place and wrap with thread
Add the bling …
Break out the finishing epoxy and put it on the rod dryer. The dryer rotates the rod slowly to even the epoxy as it cures.
Add a little heat to thin the epoxy and remove air bubbles. Then let it dry for 24 hours.
I get my parts from mud hole tackle in Orlando, the have all the goodies and decent help articles to show you how to do this stuff. I like Fuji guides, and these are direct replacements for the OEM guides on this rod. Took a lot of trial and error and a good set of calipers to figure out the guide models and sizes, but I can match them pretty close now.
Finished product … wax the rods, clean old scales and fish parts off the reels … boom! All like new again!
Gorham Fishing Team 