It’s 90 degrees by mid-morning, but we have to go fishing when its low-tide. Today that means 11:43am. My family and I haven’t been fishing in many years together, and I was looking forward to it. Last night my dad set a crab trap on the pier behind their place, and by 11pm we couldn’t wait any longer to check on our catch… nothing. By the time morning rolled around, the bait was gone and the crab trap was empty.
This morning we drove out to a bridge close to St Pete Beach, and got our fishing nets ready. We were going crabbing! My parents got right into the water and started hunting crabs. You see, it’s better to go when it’s low tide so the water is more shallow and there is better visibility. Basically, you walk very slowly through nasty, murky water until you see something. Using the fishing net (think butterfly catcher) you scoop from the bottom up into the crab, and voile! the crab falls right into the net.
It took all of 5 minutes before I got into the nasty water, thankfully I got new sandals that have very thick soles, so I didn’t have to really touch anything on the bottom. The crabs blend into the grassy, cloudy-bottom water, but when I spotted one, I was thrilled! But in a way, the crab looked like it had been watching me all along. When the grass moved with the tide, and the crab became visible, I felt like it had its eyes on me. Turns out it was mating with another crab, and who knows what was really on its mind… We each caught a few crabs, and my parents got a bunch of sea urchins and conch. Mike was wondering why the sea urchins were moving. Have you ever seen one? They are prickly-looking balls, but the prickly things are the tentacles. Crazy what types of creatures live in the sea. These are all things we eat…well, maybe just some of us eat them…
{photo above is a 8 foot grouper we saw at the Georgia Aquarium earlier this week}
the deadliest catch!
Hey Christine! I must say, at first, I thought you caught that big fish, or encountered it while crabbing (until I read the last sentence). Hope all is well and you had a safe flight to Spain! Tracy passed your blog along to me, so I cant wait to hear about your travels- I ll be jealous sitting iin Building 7 freezing my fingers and toes off!
Heather G
Hola chicos!
Como estan? Como fue su primera dia en Espana?
I hope those last minute jitters have gone away now that you’re off. You kind of freaked us out at Standard Tap- we thought Christine was going to bite Mike’s head off.
We’re really going to miss you – I mean it! I pretty much cried the entire ride back to Germantown; however, I was PMSing which may have had something to do with it. I don’t think we know anyone else who we can call up last minute to go out mid week for dinners and excessive amounts of wine- damn all those responsible people out there. You better not come back all grown up.
Anyway, I can’t believe we didn’t talk about my bruise at all when we saw you! I don’t even know if you knew about it… You know when I fell off your bar stool when we were helping you clean out the liquor cabinet…I woke up with the biggest bruise ever seen by man! It was basically the size of a football and it was bright purple. Dan got a good shot of it so we’re going to have to send it to you in an e-mail if you haven’t seen it yet.
I can’t wait to start reading about your adventures and mishaps (I spent a month in Spain and I must have had a story about getting lost or having a misunderstanding of some sort every day). I have one piece of advice: Just because you have a ticket it does not mean that there is a seat for you.