Lake News

Or lack thereof. Nothing going on of any importance. We’re getting an occasional rain now so the lake is creeping up. It probably rose 4-6” in July but for sure we have plenty of room for a couple of rainy, rainy hurricanes.

Last year I bought a small electric chain saw as part of our hurricane preparedness kit. I like electric appliances because I know they will work and I’ve never seen a gas chain saw that will start easily if not used more or less daily. Of course the disadvantage is not having electricity after a storm but I have a good generator and plenty of extension cords so as long as the generator starts, I should be able to cut my way out. It’s not a stretch to assume that a good wind storm could bring down a couple of trees across our driveway and isolate us for a few days. After I bought it I tried it out on a couple of trees and decided to wack down three dead ones this past week. One of the trees came down exactly where I’d aimed it; the second was generally in the right spot – maybe a few feet off; the last one totally had a mind of it’s own and crashed down 90 degrees from the target area and crushed a few plants that weren’t supposed to be crushed. I managed to do the job with no crushing or cutting blows to my body so I call it a big success. The first time I did it, I ended up with a tree on top of me and took 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get out from under it. I’m just not a chain saw kind of guy.

We had an old derelict house trailer on the road coming to the house and it really trashed up the neighborhood. It had been there for years and was apparently hurting some of the local property owners who were trying to sell. The owner started tearing it down about 9 months ago. A guy came in and stripped off all the metal in a few weeks so initial progress was good. A couple of months later, a big piece of construction equipment came in and pushed it over but left it pretty much intact. Over the next several months nothing happened except people coming by and stealing lumber so it remained a large trash pile. I had heard the plan was to burn it but we were in a “no-burn” zone until June. Last week they started burning it off, bit by bit. As of today, it’s just a pile of ash and a pile of sheet metal which the initial strip job missed and I suspect it will be totally cleaned up by this weekend. Needless to say we’re all glad that eyesore is history but it did add a certain redneck character to the place.

New York News

You’ve probably heard about the steam pipe explosion in New York City on Wednesday. We caught it on the evening news and got concerned when the location was identified as next to Grand Central Station. Chris was recently named manager of the Grand Central store and we knew he was there. He finally called about 8:00 PM and said he was safe but had been right there when it blew. He had just walked out of the station and was less than a small city block from the action. He said it sounded like train coming through and the ground was rumbling. He said it looked and sounded exactly like the 9-11 World Trade Center collapse and he started running with the masses. He said he was totally covered in debris and people were staring at him when he got on board the subway for home. To make it more interesting the guy across the subway from him was a middle easterner wearing a large backpack. Nobody on the train knew anything about the explosion and he said he just knew that the train was the next target.

Overall his day was exciting. As I said, he had become manager of the Grand Central store within the past few weeks. Grand Central is the highest grossing store in the New York District. For six months prior to that he had been manager of the Flatiron store, which is the largest and flagship NY store. There were some personnel changes just above his pay grade and he ended up with a new District Manager who came in from Philadelpia. The new DM brought along a store manager who took over the Flatiron store when Chris moved to Grand Central Station- a nice promotion for both of them. Managing either of these store is a big deal in the District. Chris said that he was getting frequent calls from employees at Flatiron complaining about irregularities with the new manager. It all came to a head Wednesday – about the same time the steam line was blowing – and the new guy was summarily fired. When Chris, who was still running from the explosion, managed to get a call through to the regional manager to alert them about the explosion, she told him they were in a meeting and would call him back in a few minutes. When they called, it was to tell him that he was going to manage both the Flatiron and Grand Central stores until Labor Day and that he would be acting New York District Manager for the next week – the DM was going on a long planned vacation.

The bottom line to us is that Chris’s vacation to visit Florida next month is off the table!! He said he’ll be doing seven 12’s for the next month or so.

Florida Flower Hall of Fame

For the thousands of you who haven’t written in to learn about the Florida Flower Hall of Fame, this scribbling is for you. I have two flowers that I have installed onto the pedestle as Hall of Famers. These are flowers, not bushes. I differentiate by whether or not the stems turn woody. Not sure how regular biologists would handle the distinction. To make my list there are a few requirements. Individually the requirements are not too tough but collectively, the list of candidates dwindle rapidly. That’s why only two made it.

First requirement is that they have nearly constant, very colorful, very profilic blooms. So anything that last only a month or two or six is out of the running from the get go. Second, they must be virtually carefree. If you have to dawdle over them – water, fertilizer, mulch – they’re scrubbed. They have to be tough and survive through floods, droughts, heat, and cold in the essentially barren Florida soil. And finally, they have to self propogate so you only have to plant them once. Self propogate means they either seed themselves or you can break off a stem, stick it in the ground and have it grow a new plant. You have to admit that’s a tough set of criteria.

Two plants made it through the hurdles. One does best in the sun; one does best in the shade. So between the two, you can cover all the bases. The sun lover is called a Periwinkle in Florida – Vinca elsewhere. They come in dozens of colors and shades. Each plant will support loads of flowers almost constantly and they reseed so easily that you just have to look around to see a new seedling and move it to a new spot. If a single plant outgrows it’s particular spot, you can trim it back, stick the clippings in the ground and oila!, a new plant. I never worry about whether or not they’re getting enough or too much water, wonder if they need fertilizer – they don’t- or whether the bugs are eating them. I have to assume they taste bad or something.

The shade lover is, of course, the Impatiens. Everything I said about the periwinkle is true for the Impatiens. It is a little more cold sensitive but in my 4 year experience, because they are planted in shady, sheltered spots, they tend to survive a killing frost. And if the plant does crater, it has dropped enough seeds in the same spot to replicate itself quickly.

With both of these flowers you an plant them directly into the ground or use them in hanging baskets and planters. Both have an incredible range of color selections so you can literally make a one time purchase of the colors you want and then just move the progeny around from spot to spot as they appear to change the look of the landscaping. Start with a couple 18 plant flats filled with a variety of colors and you’re set for life. Try that with your petunias! Some varieties of marigolds come close I will admit, but so far, none I’ve tried reach perfection. I’d love to find one that does since alas, no yellow or orange Periwinkles or Impatiens.

week of the 4th

The week of the 4th has been a great one. The drought has given in to the normal tropical rains. We were extremely dry thru June but this week – Monday thru Friday – 3.5” in the rain gauge. That’s great for the lake which is noticeably higher – still very low but heading in the right direction. The rain of course adds water but it also stops the fern growers from pumping irrigation water from the lake. The downside to the rain is that the grass grows like crazy. I’m now in the two mows per week mode. What’s bad about that is that timing is critical. You can’t mow in the morning when it’s cool because the grass is so wet it clogs up any mower, even the riding mowers. By the time it drys out around noon, it’s way hot but if you wait until late afternoon, there’s a high chance that you’ve experience afternoon thunderstorms and it’s too wet again. So as dumb as it sounds, you more or less have to mow at the hottest time of the day.

On the 4th we headed over to Joey’s boat with our friend Betty Tighe. Joey had invited a few friends and Tom’s family showed up. I think Tom was there too but he spent most of the day studying some programming book deep in the interior of the boat so he was only sort of there. The day was perfect – a bit overcast to hold the temperature down and a slight breeze. The company was great, food was great, and the wine was exceptional.

On Thursday we went to Simon’s scout camp where he had spent the past week earning his lifeguard creds. It was family day and we joined him for dinner. I don’t know yet for sure if he got the badges since his final exam and testing was on Friday. He sounded confident and we met a couple of his instructors and they seemed very positive that he had it nailed. His next hurdle is Eagle which he’ll probably earn right after the first of the year. He was having a great time and the only hitch seemed to be wildlife encounters. Several times his tent was invaded by a racoon which carried off his backpack. He had sequestered some beef jerky inside and I guess the aroma called in the critters. He managed to retrieve his backpack each time but the coon was actually smart enough to unzip the compartment and drag out the contents.

I ran an experiment with Barney the bass. He’s very predictably under the dock at 7 pm and hungry. I’ve always wondered how well they’d enjoy the giant grasshoppers we grow here. These hoppers are great yellow critters 3-4” in length and can strip a tree in minutes. Voracious feeders. But they’re slow and can’t really fly so they’re easy to catch. On 3 consecutive nights I captured big juicy ones and dropped them in front of Barney. Each time he came up and gave it a good look then swam away. This is the same Barney that leaps out of the water to catch a Bream similarly dropped from the dock. So clearly, grasshoppers are not preferred eating.

Nice wildlife sighting on Friday. Mid afternoon I was looking out the front window and spotted a red fox maybe 50′ away. He very casually walked up and got to within 10′ of me. I called Nancy and as soon as he heard me he scooted away. I’ve seen foxes in the field next door usually early in the morning or early evening but this is the closest I’ve been to one in the wild.

On the project front I completed a job that I’d been meaning to do for about 40 years. I had accumulated misc hardware – nuts, bolts, washers, brackets etc etc – in a set of old coffee cans. Typically I could find something to do most jobs by dumping out a can, spending 1/2 hour sorting thru and then dumping it all back in the can. When I’d actually have to buy hardware, I’d buy packages and then dump the left overs into the coffee cans. As of Monday I had 4 cans full to the brim so you can get a feel for the magnitude of the collection. There was absolutely no pre – sort – each can contained whatever it was that I had tossed in over the years. A year ago or so I bought a set of plastic drawers designed to go on a workbench and hold hardware. But it was such a daunting task that it had very low priority on my “to do” list. Well this week my list is current and it was time to quit procrastinating and do the job. It took 2 rainy days but it’s done. I am now officially organized. I didn’t really do it as well as possible – like organizing by size. Rather I have 3 categories of most things – small, medium and large. So I have nuts, washers, wood screws, machine screws, and bolts – each sorted in the small, medium large category. Springs, knobs, brackets and weird stuff that I have no idea about each get a drawer. Lots of picture hanging stuff and all manner of wallboard fasteners. Wire nuts, pipe straps and scads of nails and tacks. I left the nails in several jars and didn’t put them in the drawers. I know this is all hard to believe but get used to me being organized!

Olivia’s week

This was Olivia’s week with us. So as you might guess Nana played a bigger overall part than I did but we managed plenty of excitement. On the first night I introduced her to the pet bass. I would catch a bream, flip it to where I knew the bass would be and she would squeal with delight as he gobbled it up. After a dozen or so, she wanted to be the one who tossed the bream to the bass. Believe it or not, he grabbed 18 bream for a new all time record. We know it was the same fish because you can watch him grab the bream and then retake his position beside the ladder. The low water is quite clear now and I’m sure the bass is in the 7 pound range. The next night was quite a bit different. Olivia wanted to actually catch the bream herself, take them off the hook, and feed the bass. I was totally out of the loop except as a score keeper. Oh, and it was not ok to just call it a pet bass, it needed a name. We agreed on Barney. So henceforth we called it Barney. On the second night, Barney ate 11 bream. It’s really hard to imagine the fish could still swim with 18 on Saturday and 11 on Sunday. Monday was a repeat with 13; Tuesday, 10. I’m sure we could have done more on Tuesday but George and Rick took out their kayaks and banged into the dock, scaring Barney into hiding. Wednesday we didn’t get home until quite late so the week’s tally was a phenomenal 52 bream in 4 days. Oh, and by Monday, Olivia was kissing the bream goodbye before feeding them to Barney.

Monday she and I went crabbing in Bulow Creek. Simon and I had caught 18 on our last visit which I thought was a fairly high hurdle. We got off to a slow start – plenty of crabs but Olivia was having trouble with the long net so we switched off and she became the line person and I took over netting duties. We managed 4 lines and several times had 3 going at the same time. We lost track and when I asked if she was ready to quit, she wanted to know how many I thought we had. Until I could definitively tell her we had more than 18, she was staying. As it turns out we got 24. Nancy had the water boiling by the time we got home so she and Olivia enjoyed another crab feast.

As I said, she actually spent most of her time here with Nancy. They squeezed in two shopping trips so her birthday next week is covered. On Sunday, after shopping, they worked on a quilt and finished it Sunday night. Olivia actually did the block placement so the design is hers. On Tuesday she went to Nancy’s quilt group meeting and along with another gal her age, sorted through 7 boxes of fabric recently acquired from a friend in Salt Lake City. On Wednesday she went to the Duplicate Bridge club in Crescent City. She watched closely for the first half and then actually got to help in playing a hand after lunch.

The other big activities were working on a 750 piece jigsaw puzzle – still not completed and watching a few episodes of Northern Exposure from Netflix between our evening fishing trip, a shower to get rid of the fish smell, and crashing to sleep. The week flew by so I know I had a good time. Next time she comes, I need to take her surf fishing. Just not enough time to do it all!!!

Project

I surf fish quite often and in the summer combine surf fishing with blue crab catching. That’s because of the proximity of the crabbing grounds with the ocean. One of the principle tools of the surf fisherman is the 5 gallon bucket. In fact if you see a guy fishing in the surf who doesn’t have a 5 gallon bucket, he’s probably an amateur. The bucket is used to carry bait, hold the catch, sunblock, beer – whatever. It also doubles as a seat if configured with a lid. I added a new high tech gadget to my bucket that replaces a simple lid with a tackle holding lid. Right up there with the cell phone in terms of great ideas. Still the ultimate simplicity of a 5 gallon bucket limits it’s utility. Invariably I end up with water in the bucket which screws up my tools lying on the bottom of the bucket – that would be pliers, bait knife, fillet knife, crab twine, and a rubber mallet for banging in the sand spikes, beach umbrella and the like. It becomes a real problem when the bucket doubles as a crab container and you have to dump live blue crabs on top of the tools. And we’re still faced with having to carry quite a bit of other gear to the beach. Ideally you’d like to be able to carry everything – tackle, rods, sand spikes, tackle, bucket, bait etc etc all in one trip from the truck to the fishing spot. Life is complicated by things like chairs and beach umbrellas which, some would argue, are pure luxury. When I go by myself, I just have to plan on two trips. When Nancy is with me, I have to plan on only being able to fish close to the stairs since she’s not big on walking too far down the beach to a prime spot.

So I decided that the 5 gallon bucket needs some customization to allow the tools to be stored in a fashion that protects them from water and blue crabs; that allows the sand spikes to be carried as part of the bucket; and allows pre-made rigs to be carried in a fashion where they don’t get tangled up. An objective was to totally eliminate the need to carry a separate tackle box. With my new work shop and scads of new tools, I was certain that I could create something to meet many of my objectives. So with a saw, a drill, and a pop rivet gun I attached four 4” pieces of 1” PVC pipe along the outside perimeter of the bucket and two pieces of 3/4” PVC pipe on the inside of the bucket. So now I can carry 2 sand spikes, the rubber mallet, and the fillet knife on the outside of the bucket and my pliers and bait knife inside. I attached a wide strip of foam on the inside for hooking rigs and installed a hook to hang my leader dispenser. As best I can tell, it’s a masterpiece of design engineering but the real proof will be in the field trials. I’m thinking a 3 week intensive field program of surf fishing and crabbing is needed to fully valildate the design and the workmanship. Olivia is coming tomorrow and will be with us for most of the week so she and I will do the first field tests.

Another shop project – design and build an adapter that would let me use my new wet/dry shop vac to clean the drain pipe of the air conditioner. The intake hose on the vac is roughly 1.5”; the A/C drain is 3/4”. So I needed some kind of reducing scheme that would be tight enough to allow the vac to work. If it wasn’t tight at both ends, there wouldn’t be enough vacume to pull the water from the A/C. I won’t go into the design details but suffice it to say, the adapter is a thing of beauty and works like a world champ. I pulled about a pint of water in about 15 seconds.

Do I smell patents?? Nobel prizes??

A new valuation??

All in all most of last week was boring. I pretty much finished up the tough yard work and we’re in good shape now for a few months. The chipper has been the big enabler. My friend Bill Dentel and I picked it up when we first started clearing the property and it’s been a real work horse. With a 10HP engine, this machine can really eat up the yard trash and spit out mulch. It runs about 2 hours on a tank of gas and I’ve run through 3 tanks of gas in the past 3 weeks. That’s some serious chipping. I also took advantage of the low, low lake level and cleaned out logs and trash along the beach and constructed a new bottom step for the dock ladder. Under normal conditions there were plenty of steps but with the drop in lake level, that last step was a long way from the bottom and required a gymnast – or at least someone under 60 – to climb up from the water.

The weekend was R and R time for sure. On Saturday we went out for a lunch cruise on Joey’s boat and took our old friend Betty Tighe along. It’s the first time she’d been out on it and was of course blown away by the whole experience. After the boat we did Margharita’s at Grill’s and topped it off with a few cold drafts at the Sanford Boat works. Sunday was Father’s day and Tom’s family came up. Eileen came too so we had a nice family get together complete with swimming in the lake and feeding the pet bass. Tina brought all the food so it was a nice relaxing day for Nancy too.

Got a bit of a shock today. Across the lake from us is a mobile home. It’s on a nice piece of property and recently a for sale sign went up. A few people have asked us to let them know if anything on the lake ever comes up for sale so we drove by today to pick up a realtor brochure. The property is 5 acres with 270 feet on the lake. The mobile home is a 1972 vintage that has been completely refurbished inside and out. It’s 1370 sf of living space and a 700sf screen porch. The brochure says it has 4 (micro) bedrooms and 2 baths. The road to it is dirt and gravel – a bit windy and probably seasonally a bit nasty. I had guessed they would ask about $350K and take under $300K if it was offered. Guess again Joe. They’re asking $495K. I sure hope they get it!!! I can’t imagine the structure itself is worth $100K which would mean they think the property is worth about $80K/acre. I personally thinks that over the top. There’s a 40 acre piece for sale at $2M, $50K/acre and a 15 acre piece on lake Diaz – a nicer body of water but not so private – for $60K/acre.

On the garden front – the action has moved from here to Simon’s garden. The garden here is played out except for a few green tomatoes and big egg plants. We’ll till in as much organic mulch as we can round up and then let it sit and cook for a few months. Simon decided he needed a pumpkin patch and has started one in his back yard in Lake Mary. He made the initial planting last Monday and reported nearly 100% germination by yesterday. His game plan is to thin out the plants leaving the 12 strongest plants to produce for Halloween 2007. Other than watering, fertilizing and keeping the dogs out of the patch, the next step is probably designing face cutouts for the jack’o Lanterns.

Simon’s week

crabfeast

Simon stayed with us this week. It was another combination of fun and work but maybe a bit more on the fun side this time. Over the past six months or so lots of dead branches had come down from the trees but with a fire ban in place, the piles just kept getting higher. We finally got some rain and the ban was lifted so Si and I did a major burn of our own. He mowed the lawn one day and between us we ran another 12 gauge circuit from the generator area up by the carport to the house. I had put in a single circuit last year just before hurricane season and it worked fairly well but had some limitations. By running another circuit the capacity will be doubled and should eliminate some of the shortcomings from last season. We did a few light chores in the garden, mostly picking beans but also buried some fish carcasses to fertilize. Si was in charge of catching and I was in charge of burying. We also got some power washing done – cleaning off the kayaks. Bees kept us from cutting jungle but we did set some bee traps and wiped out two nests – at least 50 yellow jackets between two sites.

Simon brought his kayak up with him so we had to make sure it performed well in some of my favorite fishing spots. We did a day on Strickland Creek and a day on the Tomoka River. Both of these waterways are on the coast so we were fishing for salt water fish. The fishing was great – the catching was lousy. Undeterred, we tried our hand at surf fishing and crabbing on two days. On Tuesday we struck out on the beach but caught 14 blue crabs. Before driving home we called Nancy and told her to put the pot on for some crabs. The picture is Simon and Nancy doing the first day’s catch. We went again on Friday and this time made a decent catch in the surf – two nice whiting, a pompano, and a small shark. It was sweet because people fishing next to us got zip, even fishing with 4 rods. The secret was the bait. We were using sand fleas and the competition was using shrimp. They tried to catch sand fleas but just didn’t have that touch. We could tell it was driving them crazy and Simon wanted me to go show them how to catch sand fleas. I don’t think so! When we left he gave them the ones we hadn’t used so he felt better. From the beach we hit Bulow creek where we’d scored well on crabs earlier. We caught 18 this time. Interestingly, the places where we caught the crabs were totally new to me in terms of trying to crab so I have a nice collection of hot spots now and feel fairly confident that one place or the other will produce all summer long. We ate the fish for dinner on Saturday and Simon took the crabs home with him on Sunday – cooked of course.

Each evening we fished off the dock for a couple of hours. We caught a few bass, the biggest maybe 4 pounds; a couple of mudfish which ended up in the garden as fertilizer; a large soft shell turtle; and hundreds of bait size bluegill. Si would catch the bait for me and then feed the pet bass who lives under the dock with the overage. On Thursday night the bass nabbed 8 bream; 7 on Friday; and an unbelievable 10 on Saturday. The fish must hear us on the dock and gets into position next to the ladder. Nearly each time Simon would catch a bream and drop him on the fish – splash, bam, he’s gone. A couple of times he nearly caught the bream in the air. It looks to be about 5 pounds already. I’m guessing he’s in withdrawal now that Simon has gone home.

We had an interesting wildlife sighting a couple of evenings. A pack of 4 baby armadillos has nested right near the house. They are little bitty pinkish miniatures and have no fear of us at all. I had been seeing a large one for a few evenings last week and that must be the mother.

All in all it was a great week. Between Tommy and Simon, I plan on resting up for a few days- they wore me to a frazzle. Having them both to help enabled me to totally catch up on all the backlog of work I had and got me back on track kayaking on the coast.

Barry

We survived Barry just fine. It’s great that the news and weather people are so on top of the storms because if they weren’t we probably wouldn’t have known we were in one. We’d have all just thought it was a normal, regular old go to hell Florida summer storm. I think giving them names now instead of just telling you it’s going to rain is a nice touch. But I am concerned that predicting a number of storms for a season gives rise to premature naming. It’s fun watching the weather guys pointing out or trying to point out some “rotation” which is synonymous with tropical storms and hurricanes. They point out an area somewhere in the middle of the gulf and say something like “the center of rotation is now located at xxyyzz” and then draw a circle around an area that looks absolutely like the rest of the cloud cover. To the casual observer there is no rotation at all. I also like it when they start flying the hurricane planes and report that they found a spot where the winds were 35 mph so it’s now getting a name. The next day they can’t find the spot with winds that high but the storm remains named. And the planes quit flying after that one “naming” flight. So I guess if you can find a cloud bank that looks like it is rotating and a blast of wind at 35 mph, however short in duration, you can officially give it a name and uphold the reputation of the forecasters who forecast an active season.

For a while they were calling this a “subtropical storm”. I’m wondering if that’s the same as a tropical sub storm which is a more apt description of both “Axxxx”, (already forgotten the first storm) which died somewhere the day after it was named, and Barry.

Don’t get me wrong, the rain was really appreciated but can you really with a straight face cover a storm for two days that dumps a total of about 2” of rain? 2″ in one hour is not a reportable event in Florida; 10″ maybe, 2″, I don’t think so. I watched the local NBC channel tonight and they start the broadcast saying they have 5 reporters stationed at key locations to report on Barry. The first guy is on the beach in rain gear. All around him are normal beach people in bathing suits waving at the camera; then they switch to a guy in Ocala who is pointing at some dark clouds and saying how bad the clouds look. Of course it’s dry and sunny where he’s standing and he proclaims how amazing it is that you can see storm clouds and clear blue sky at the same time. I’m impressed that they can do it without cracking up. I empathize for the poor reporter in the field who knows he looks like a total jerk trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. But my favorite was the footage of the 8′ gator being captured in a field – there because of the storm. In almost every newscast for the past couple of months there has been footage of gators moving about on land attributed to the drought or to mating season. But this one was moving because of the storm. Give me a break. Wait, wait I have a new favorite. This reporter is standing in a large puddle caused by a clogged drain in Orlando. She is ankle deep but reports that the puddle is 2′ deep. Either this is one strangely built reporter or she doesn’t understand the difference between 2″ and 2′. It might have worked if she had been standing on the curb instead of in the middle of the puddle – but wait, even the curb is only 6″ high.

What a crock!!!! My concern is that people will actually pay attention to all this and become total storm wimps. Hello, this is Florida. We get nasty thunder storms all summer long and consider that totally normal. We’re down about a foot of rain statewide, even more in South Florida. Hopefully we’ll have a couple of nice rainy hurricanes this year to bring it all back to normal.

great week

Had a great week. My grandson, Tommy, came up and spent a week with us – to help me clear jungle and to chill out after a grueling finish to his Junior year. We really got lots done and have very large piles of debris to dispose of – if and when my chipper gets out of the shop. Simon comes up next week so maybe he and I can complete the chipping operation. I probably could have done it all myself but instead of taking 4 days it would have taken me 2-3 weeks. I don’t intend to ever let it get so far out of hand again.

It wasn’t all work of course. We spent most evenings down on the dock fishing. Tommy became an expert on catching bait sized bluegill and had a few opportunities to feed the pet bass. In fact he couldn’t resist and one night put one of the little bream on his cane pole and immediately hooked the bass. I wasn’t too concerned that he would land it with the flimsy pole and #10 hook but it gave him a huge tussle for about 5 seconds. For the next few nights he was no where to be found then last night, he reappeared and started gobbling bream again. The fishing wasn’t that great but the company was good. It all peaked last night between 8 and 8:30 PM when the bass suddenly went crazy. We got three with Tommy landing one fairly nice one. Between bass there were turtles stealing the bait so all in all it was exciting.

One day after clearing jungle for a few hours we headed over to the coast to do some crabbing. We struck out at the spot where Simon and I did so well last year; struck out at Tomoka Park; but struck gold at HighBridge. Tommy is really fast and actually netted one that was dropping off the bait. We ended up catching fewer than Simon and I did but they were bigger. We stopped at Publix to pick up some crab boil – that’s a seasoning you put in the boiling water before the crabs. Nancy had the pot boiling when we pulled in and within a couple of minutes she and Tommy were feasting on an appetizer of fresh blue crabs.