Fishing in Florida

On this trip down to Ocala my cousin, Jimmy Trantham, took us fishing in the Ocklawaha River. Just so you all won't get confused, Jimmy T. is my cousin and Jimmy Z. is my husband. Jimmy T. has a very nice 20 foot John Boat that had plenty of room for all three of us. Jimmy T. has been fishing the Ocklawaha River for 50 years so he knows where the fish hang out. He showed me on his "Fish Finder" he has on the boat all the fish under the boat, and there were a lot!!....and big!! But he said that the "Fish Finder" did not show you how to catch them. First he took us to a place to catch "shiners", which is the "bait" we were to use to catch the bigger fish. But, alas, by the time we got to the real fishing spot the "bait" was not as lively as we would have liked. In fact, they turned into "cut bait" which I think needs no further explanation.

This is my cousin Jimmy T. showing the bait.

But...we did catch some fish. The first to catch a fish was Jimmy Z. who caught a "mud fish" about 18 inches long. Well,.....what do you do with a "mud fish"? I won't go into detail but it involves something called a "billy stick" which reduced the "mud fish" to the bottom of the food chain.

We then moved to another spot where we caught 'Gar'. These are actually prehistoric fish with a long 'snoot' and very sharp teeth. Jimmy T. caught the one pictured below which was about 2 feet in length. He told us that there were "Gar in this river that this fish would run from". That was the only one I got a picture of but I caught one that was even bigger than that but lost it just as it got to the boat. Then Jimmy Z. caught one that was really big. In fact Jimmy T. told him that we could not bring that fish in the boat because it was too big. But the line broke just as it got up to the boat. It was at least twice as big as the one pictured.

This is the small 'Gar'. Take a look at the teeth!!

It got too hot about 1:00pm so we went home. The fishing was fun and the Ocklawaha River is beautiful. It has beautiful Cyprus Trees along the bank and the water reflects the trees just like a mirror.

Jimmy T. also showed us the place where the "Cross Florida Barge Canal" stopped. The Cross Florida Barge Canal was a canal project to connect the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean across Florida for barge traffic. Two sections were built but the project was cancelled, mainly for environmental reasons. It is now a protected green belt corridor, one mile (1.6 km) wide in most places. The work was stopped in January 1971 and officially cancelled in 1991. The picture below is where is stopped.

The Abercrombie's visit

Dawn, David, and Sean came up from Alpharette to visit this weekend. They arrived in the morning and Kim and Caleb joined us for lunch. As you see from the picture above, Caleb and Sean began plotting against the adults right away. After lunch we took the boys to Monkey Joe's to play for a couple of hours. We knew they had plans to run, jump and scream so we took them to a place built for boys to run, jump and scream....and boy did they!! Check out some of the pictures taken at Monkey Joe's.

Caleb and Sean at the bottom of the small slide.

This is Sean climbing up the wall to slide down the other side. Believe it or not Sean (only two) could climb up by himself and was able to hold his own with the big kids.

Caleb is an "old pro" at Monkey Joe's so he was showing Sean all the different things he could climb and jump and slide on. Sean just followed him like he was one of the big kids.

Wait Caleb!!! I think I knocked my tooth loose that time.

Well, look, here is Monkey Joe himself!!!!

After Monkey Joe's we all went out for dinner a O'Charley's. We all had a great dinner but the company was the best thing of all. The boys had a great time together.

After dinner Kim and Caleb went home and Dawn, David, and Sean came back to our house. Poor Sean had not gotten a nap all day except for about 10 minutes in the car on the way to Monkey Joe's. He was pooped. He always goes to bed good and Saturday night was no different except he now sleeps in the big boy bed. He was so tired he slept until after 8:00am. Then he just got up, picked out a couple books and went back to his bed. Dawn opened the door about 9:00am and he was just reading in his bed.

After Kim and Caleb got out of church, they came over for lunch. We all had lunch and let Sean and Caleb play for a while before Dawn and David got on the road back to Alpharette.The boys played with the race cars until they were ready to leave.


We all enjoyed the visit so much but I really think Caleb and Sean got the most out of it. They always have such a great time playing together.

Lightning, Lightning everywhere...and it follows us!!

Just to keep you all up to date we have been having some lightning problems....to say the least. First the lightning hit my computer in Ocala (which they say is the Lightning Capitol of the United States). I could not turn my computer on at all. So we called the City Advantage guys and they were going to send a box for me to send my computer in for repair to the Augusta address. That meant we needed to return early to Augusta. When we got home the box was waiting for us on the front porch. Long story short; I sent it to California and they replaced the entire System Board and returned it to me in about two weeks...and I did not lose any files or pictures!!! Cost Zero Dollars, getting my computer back and working, PRICELESS!! While it was gone I had to go to the library every day because I do everything by computer, banking, pay bills, e-mail, and keep in touch with the rest of the world.

Then....the Saturday before I got my computer back on Monday.....lightning struck again, this time in Augusta. We lost, the big TV (50 inch); the little TV (13 inch), the phone system, the entire alarm system, the coffeemaker, and the socket the coffeemaker was plugged into. Jimmy spent the whole next week getting electricians, the alarm folks, the telephone folks, etc together so they could verify what was lost due to lightning. We had the complete alarm system replaced, and we replaced the coffeemaker. It seems Mr. Coffee does not make the one we had any longer so we had to get another type. We also replaced both TVs, which we upgraded from what we had before.

Well, we are about back to normal again and looking forward to Sean visiting this weekend. Oh yes, he will also bring his parents, Dawn and David.