For the first time this summer I was able to get my youngest son Blair out on the boat with me. He passed up numerous opportunities early on, before he got a summer job. Now, as summer is quickly fading, he realized that he may not get a chance, so I scheduled a vacation day from work and we headed down to the camper after church.
Overcast skies provided much needed relief from the August heat, but with them came the threat of rain. We persevered and launched anyhow at 3pm targeting a 6pm high tide. Winds were 5-10 mph out of the SSE, darn near perfect. We tried several spots just south of buoy 14, on the west side of the channel- mostly because the rain appeared to be off to our south. We managed to dodge that bullet as well as several passing showers, feeling only a few sprinkles. However, although conditions looked great the fish were not biting here. So, we moved back down by buoy 12 and this is where we found some decent croaker. Our drifts carried us almost perfectly NW, and this worked well for targeting the biting depth of 38-44 feet. Anything outside of that was dead (dead zones?). Blair seemed to have lost his touch from last year, and only put one in the cooler. I was happy to catch many while he simply watched, and I ended up putting in an additional 12. The biggest was 13”, and the ratio of throwbacks to keeper was about 2:1. Succumbing to our hunger, we called it quits right around slack tide and went in for some dinner. I’ll give Blair this- he continued to fish the entire time, in contrast to last year in which he would frequently quit after an hour.
Next morning (Monday) I got up early and cleaned the fish. It was an insufferable morning dominated by relentless 95% humidity which made it feel like 100F. I then proceeded to cut grass, clean my boat, and then continue working on my boat trailer- about 4 hours worth of work (I thought I came down here to relax?). When Blair finally awoke around 9am I gave him one job to do: pack the contents of the refrigerator into the cooler. Simple. Probably took him 5 minutes. Fast forward to Tuesday. I get home from work and am ready to vacuum seal my fish prior to freezing. Well, no fish anywhere to be found. And if they weren’t in my house. There was only one place they could be,…. Ughhh. Yep, Blair had left the fish at Deal Island, in the refrigerator, in the camper closed up and with power on. Instantly I knew that this had to be dealt with ASAP, and any delay increased the likelihood of disaster. One time 25 years ago, we had a fridge fail down there (in the shack), in which we had loaded the freezer with crab bait. After two weeks, the fridge had become so rancid that we had to haul the entire unit out of the shack immediately and without opening the door. Back to the present, due to a prior commitment I was not able to go down to find the forgotten fish. Luckily Candy bailed me out and made the trip. And while what she found wasn’t pretty, it was caught in time before it became catastrophic. Note to self: next time, double check when Blair empties the fridge and packs the cooler.
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