And Merry Christmas to all my GG Buddies

One of our original members from the early days of GG has passed away. You may remember Gavin Sneed from NC. He went on to establish the Shamrock Boat Owners club and forums. I enjoyed some good conversations with Gavin and I know that he will be missed by many.

WEll NMFS gave us a 6 day open season in October for ARS.  3 weekends in a row.  Weather as sketchym, but we decided to make a go of it as buddy's boat hadn't been run in about 3 months.

Weather man lied again as Windfinder predicted 1.5'  which was actually 3-4' and never did calm down to the 1' predicted in the afternoon, it did drop from 15 to 10 mph.  Beanbag made the ride tolerable, but spray collected and when I stood up, I found I was sitting in 1/2" of water.

Bounced our way out to 113', 60 miles out of Anclote.  Made our first stop in 90' and first drop, buddy pulls a nice ARS.  Bite faded to grunts so we went a little further and pulled a keeper Gag and some ARS, but again the bite faded so we went to our original destination and pulled some more ARS, and finally the Mango bite started.  Came home with a limit of ARS, 5 mangos, a keeper gag, keeper red grouper and a bunch of Almaco Jacks that are being brined as I type this.  There was the odd Yellowtail and even a strawberry grouper (released)  First one of these I've caught on this coast.

I left the dock at 7:10 accompanied by friends and fellow club members Stu and Tom  Picked up bait from the traps I placed the day before and we were off on a LONG ride, 53 miles to a spring in 103′ It was a little rough going out but the Pressure Point handled the chop with little problem. On arrival about 2 1/2 hours later, dropped the marker on a good show of fish and proceeded to anchor up, set out a chum block and started to fish. Unfortunately, the fish did not want to cooperate. I was expecting mangroves and big AJ’s. All we caught were short AJ’s, Almaco Jacks and out of season ARS. After several hours, we decided to go to another spring, 13 miles SW of the first in 125′ of water. Very little show on this spring, but my first drop on it produced hope as a short red grouper came up. Unfortunately, that’s about all that came up except for the elusive. out of season ARS. With the seas flattening and the fish not cooperating we called it a day at 2:30 and ran home, getting there at the reasonable hour of 4:30 with a half dozen Almaco's in the box for the smoker

bada-bing bada-bang bada-boom..

Umm...look to the east, Greg. This could be a bad one. Stay safe.

I pulled the plug on my 'other life' the same day albeit 29 years ago today July 30 1990...  and never looked back.. have a great day.. enjoy 

and a super Happy Birthday Jack.. have a great day.. many many more 

Almost two months and seven appointments later, and after dorking with the one today nearly all day, I finally found the correct doctor to give me a bit of relief from my neck and arm pain.  Not only that, but this is step one of three and she thinks I can avoid surgery all together.  I hope she's right and I can avoid going under the knife again.  Our health care system has to be the most messed up system I have ever dealt with.  In other good news, the street contractor poured out the first entrance to the five houses in our block today.  I might even get to take my new RV on a ride sometime soon.

July 14 Bastille Day - Enjoy a good glass of wine.

to all the Canadian GG's on here.. hope you had a great holiday