We thought it would be fun to get the girls out into the Gulf of Mexico.
We have sailed with them before in the Gulf, but it has been near us, or Corpus or Galveston. What is the difference you may ask? It is the color of the water. We have brown, Florida has blue. Anything west of the where the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico is laden with silt from the river. It makes the water brown. Go east of the mouth of the Mississippi, and the water is a beautiful bright blue color.
Deb and I were looking forward to doing some fishing. We wanted to catch some good sized fish, but the private charter trips are pretty pricey, and we didn’t want to spend that much. We thought that the girls might get bored at some point. Paying $50 or so per person and having them not want to fish the whole time, it a heck of a lot different than $300 per person on a private charter. Either way, Deb and I had our serious fishing faces on for the trip out. 🙂 We didn’t expect to catch much but were hoping we would.
The girls were excited for the first little bit of the trip and then they settled into relaxing. We had about a 45 minute to an hour trip to the fishing spot. After the excitement of leaving the dock, seeing the other boaters, the awe of the color of the water, they were ready to nap. Chazzy laid down on Whitney’s lap and Swab sat on the other leg. This alternated between that and going inside the cabin and playing with her toys at a table inside.
At one point, Swab and I went up on the roof of the boat as we were going out the pass into the Gulf of Mexico. There was a small sandbar island, and it was packed with people. Boats were all nosed up onto the shore; people were swimming and sunning on boats and sand. She kept asking if we could go onto that island too. No-go in our boat or the one we were on.
I did explain to her that this is what the dingy is for. With our sailboat, we would be able to anchor out where it was deep enough and take the dingy on little trips to an island or exploring. She was satisfied with the answer for sure.
We fished for a while and caught fish the whole time, but they were small. Each person got a chance to catch some fish and real them up. We weren’t sure we would keep them due to size, but the crew suggested we do. They said they would be good eating and we would likely catch enough for a good sized family meal. They were right, and we did. I wouldn’t have kept them if I were cleaning them because it was a lot of work for the meat on them but they clean them.
While on our way back, we saw this awesome boat coming up behind us. This was about a 55-foot boat or so and I didn’t get a picture when he passed us because I was awed. This thing accelerated like a race boat and hopped up on a plane. It shot a rooster tail of water about 75 feet behind it. I don’t know what kind of engines are in it, but all I could think of was that the fuel must have burning gallons a second. It had to suck down a lot of fuel to get this beast to lift out the water as it did.
As we were coming back in, Swabby found another little girl and had someone to play with. They had such a good time with the little alligator toys she got at Babcock ranch. If you didn’t read about that trip, check out the link to that blog post here.
All in all, it was a good fishing trip. It was on the Flying Fish Charter Crew. They have more than one type of charter trip, from party boats to individual charters. They have fishing trips of different lengths depending on what you want.