Vacation was later than usual this year as we tried to avoid the rainy times in June. St. George has been pretty wet in the middle of June during our last two trips, so we went for the first week in July instead. It was a bittersweet trip for me as I realized the kids are probably done with the island until they have their own kids. It’s a great place for grownups to relax, but not so good for teenagers. Another downer for me was the decline in the quality of the restaurants on the island. You can still eat well in Apalach, but not on the island.
Our house was the second worst house we’ve ever had, but what the heck, it’s a beach house! We had several days with lots of waves, so we didn’t get to swim with the fish as much as in previous trips. It finally calmed down towards the end, but still, the fish weren’t present near the beach.
We fished on Thursday and caught more fish than we can store in our freezer. I’ll post pictures soon as Rhonda is picking them out tonight. We chartered a 9 hour trip from Journey’s of St. George with Justin as the captain and Johnny as the mate. We fished off a catamaran with twin 140 HP Suzuki 4-strokes…a smooth ride! The day was perfect with south winds and very smooth seas. We ran out for about 30 minutes, then stopped to pull up some grouper and snapper. We then ran again until we were about 40 miles offshore over a shrimper that went down in about 100 feet of water. The amberjack were swimming at about 40-50 feet and were visible from the boat! It was like fishing in an acquarium at that depth. We were also catching grouper off the bottom.
We caught a variety of fish, but it was mostly amberjack (one short of our limit), red snapper, and grouper (black and red – I didn’t know there was more than one kind, but the difference was obvious when you pulled them out of the water). We had a lot more action than you might think from the photo as we caught more than a dozen that were an inch or two short of the legal size.
Skipper and Beth came down from Perdido Key. She and he spent the first part of the week with his family there at their condo. Rhonda took some pretty good pictures of them on the beach.
Brad’s friend Jamie went with us and seemed to have a blast. Teenagers are just weird…Brad discovered Subway and ended up eating five feet of sandwich during our vacation. That’s strange to me when all that fresh seafood is available.
Bottom line for me – get these kids out of the house, then get a boat that’ll take us to Dog Island!