The marine report for April 4 was: “two to three foot waves, winds moderate and sunny all day.” Thus begins another adventure for the fearsome four from upstate New York. Neal Bostwick lives on Chyle Road and Rocky Reed and Roy Dievendorf live in the town of Columbia. This long awaited fishing trip on the Gulf of Mexico was about to get underway. Our “booking agent” and host were our good friends Ron and Barbara Barnes, who spend the winter at Sundance Lakes RV park in New Port Richey and make their home on Canadarago Lake the rest of the year. Back in New York, Ron is our substitute cribbage player. It is the game of cribbage that holds this group together. Now let’s go fishing! Our arrival at the dock found our captain scurrying around getting everything in order. Captain Joyce Wagner said we would have about a 15-minute wait for the tide to come in enough to float the MIJOY. Just before we were afloat, a dolphin swam by, which we took as a sign of good luck. Chet, our first mate, put our gear (lunch, wind breakers and cameras) on board, and we were under way at 8:15. Our path from the dock to the gulf was the Pithlachascotee River, locally referred to as Cote. We had plenty of time to relax as it took us 2.5 hours to reach the first selected fishing spot. Most of us took the rough ride pretty well. We were now 30 miles from the Florida shore. Chet was a pretty busy fellow, setting up all of the poles and getting the bait ready. We had hopes of catching Amberjack despite the warning that the water temperature was a few degrees colder than optimum. Our second target was the grouper. We were fishing over underwater structures. The first fish we caught were grunt. There were a lot of them, but it took a while to get the hang of getting them into the boat. If you were not quick, they would take your bait and escape. We had quite a few before we moved to a new spot. It wasn’t long before Neal broke the ice and tied into a nice grouper. Each fish was weighed and measured to make certain that it was the legal size of 22 inches. Neal’s fish was 15 pounds. Now, we kept Chet pretty busy. During the next couple of hours, we caught and released several undersized groupers. During this same time period, we added several more grunts to the fish storage chest. In the end, we had seven groupers of legal size. Roy had a 12 pounder, Roc and Curt just under 10 pounds and Ron had one 24 inches, just under 12 pounds. “Let’s find some Amberjack!” With this pronouncement, the captain headed to find another “hot spot.” Our instructions for landing Amberjack were simple. After the first hit, immediately start the retrieve before they dive into the sunken structures and the line is cut. Roy had the first hit and the fight was on. At the end it was fish 1 Roy 0. I had the same experience and had the black and blue arms to show for it. We all had similar experiences. There was a lot of hardware left there this day. We were just not meant to bring one home, but what a great time. The trip back to the dock would be a long one, so we relaxed, finished our lunch and rested. I was relaxing in a deck chair when I noticed the boat following us was getting closer. I was about to ask Chet if that boat was going to pass us when he also saw it. Just moments later, a blue light on the approaching boat started flashing. It was the a Florida Fish and Wildlife boat. Our captain slowed the boat and finally stopped. The Coast Guard boat pulled along side and a conservation officer boarded us. He was very polite and wanted to know if we were bringing any fish back with us. Chet told him that we had a good day and, yes, we did have some fish. Chet was very nervous and when asked to show him the fish, he opened up the bait locker. The officer looked in and laughed while Chet apologized and opened up the fish chest. The officer noted that this was the best catch he had seen in a long time. This made us feel pretty good. He then proceeded to check all of the boat documents, licenses and boat safety items. The captain was also nervous and one paper he asked for had an expired date. This sent Captain Joyce scurrying for the up-to-date document, which she produced. He ascertained that her boat had never been boarded before, which she acknowledged. He told her that next time to just slow down and do not stop the boat. The boarding boat would pull along side at about four knots, and the officer would step over onto the moving boat. Sounded risky to us! Our group seems to attract the law. While fishing in the Adirondacks a couple of years ago we were interrogated by conservation officers regarding our day’s catch. But that’s another story. “Another day in paradise, fish all day and dance all night.”
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