Mexico Beach!

And so we arrived.  Very late last night.  Neither of us could sleep yet we were so happy to be up here again.  Finally I went to bed at 2:30 AM CT and woke at 6:46 AM CT.  around 9:30 we went out to the pier to do some fishing.  The tv cable was not coming in clearly at all and Neal had phoned the management company and they in turn had phoned the cable company. 

Neal got all set up to fish and caught two of these spade/angel (fish tank looking) fish before I even had my rig on my 1st pole!

 

and here he is posing with the fish because I made him.  If you've ever been fishing and caught a fish and not taken its picture only to never get another fish all day, well then you know why I made him pose with this fish.  However.............

 Then the cable company called and the rep said he was going to be to the condo in 10 mins and Neal started walking back.  And so..... I caught this! on the lovely pink pole you see in the upper right.

 A Pompano!  Garry had told me the pompano had been running there a couple of weeks ago and gave me very detailed instructions of what rigging to use, where to buy the rigs, which shrimp from which place etc etc.  and well, here is what happens when you listen to someone who fishes all the areas around Mexico Beach on a very frequent basis..... you catch your husband's dream fish catch!

and a nice gentleman who admired my catch agreed to take my picture with the fish so I could be oh so happy in the photo with the pompano!  and I kept it too!  Neal wanted to taste a pompano as we've heard they are very good eating.  and it was teehee  So I called Neal (who was still at the condo) to tell him ummmm "honey when you bring me my chapstick bring a lot of ice!"  and then after a few more angel/spade fish my other nearly-local fishing buddy Brent had caught a flounder and I wanted to see what it looked like "I haven't seen one in so long" even though it was very small.  As I'm down looking at this flounder I turn around to see one of the light weight rods bent over the dock with the  bottom of the rod about 6" off of the ground and it was NEAL's pole as after I caught that pompano I put a third baited rig into the water to up my odds of catching another one.

Needless to say, I raced back to my/Neal's pole and grabbed it and man was that thing bent nicely!  It was moving around and I thought I had another Pompano but then it started heading to shore and I started following my line down the pier over a pole under a pole over a pole over a pole over a sign post all along Brent is following me down the pier telling me up   under   up  etc so I did not lose the fish.  and he is telling me its a ray it swims like a ray.  I said its big whatever it is and kept walking up and down the pier as it swam back and forth below me still too deep to see what it is/was.  I trying to reel and dig into my shorts pocket (the kind with velcor to keep them closed ) battling to get my camera out as I was so sure I was going to lose it but I hoped to at least get it to the surface to take the mystery out of what type of fish it was.  well dear readers, below you will see the bringing the fish up to the pier and photos of my HUGE black Drum!

and I caught more spade/angel fish and some "bait fish" as we call them and I caught another pompano just before Neal came back from the Cable tv fixing appointment and look something tried to take my catch away from me as i was reeling it in!  I gave this one away.  A really nice young man filleted my original pompano for me and taught me how to fillet it and then Neal and i ate it as a snack after we were done fishing for the day.  We were out about 4 hours (well i was there all that time) and that includes clean up time of all the gear so the condo does not smell of fishing shack!

 You can see my second pompano was much smaller than the first one even if he had retained all of his belly!


May each of you have a day filled with as much joy and relaxation as I had today.
Shrimp smelling finger hugs from
denise/deBRAT