Another trip to the "second home" has come and gone. As usual, it was great for relaxing my system, but this trip was exhausting. Lots of work - work for the office, work on the house, very tiring but rewarding.
Fishing was hit and miss on this trip. First day had a ton of luck with the pompano, then a skunk day, then got chased out by the cold. on Thursday I found a honey hole at the Fort Pickens Pier (finally tried it out). It was cold and windy, but not as bad as the day before, which was in the THIRTIES. I filled up the cooler with a dozen pigfish. I've been looking for a while and finally found a place where I can just fill the cooler with some tasty fish - and these guys are delicious.
Just a piece of live shrimp cut up on a #1 circle hook on a Carolina rig with a 2oz weight. Reel it off the bottom and wait. Don't set the hook, just reel in steady when the bite is strong. Caught nonstop.
These guys were decent size, fun fighting and very tasty. I steamed one up and it was really good, lots of fat which gives it a rich flavor. Not as good as the pompano, but close. They were big enough that I could fillet them. And since I had a lot, I ended up filleting most of them (kept a couple whole, but it's a lot more work to do that).
It gave me a chance to try out my new idea for cleaning fish. I bought a plastic outdoor folding table, brought it out to the back porch by the hose, cleaned them out back, using the hose to help clean the fish and wash off the table. It worked great, kept the kitchen clean and MUCH easier. Just a little chilly, it was in the forties at night when I was doing this.
I also discovered that if I keep the fish guts in the freezer until trash day, I can avoid attracting critters and bothering the neighbors.
I have a big freezer I bought in St. Augustine to freeze fish to take home. I quickly realized it was too big, but kept it in storage and moved it to Pensacola. Surprisingly, it still works, so I'm using it now and it's taking a lot of pressure off the freezer inside - can use for bait, extra fish, guts, extra ice packs. Very convenient.
This trip was a lot of assembling furniture - a bed frame, living room set, a meditation area (which is AWESOME!) and this nice kitchen island, so we have a place to eat, drink coffee and chill in the kitchen. The place feels a lot more like home now, but it was a lot of work getting all this together.
Monday was a skunk day surf fishing. Tuesday I got up early and went to Johnson Beach. I didn't last long.
It was REALLY cold. So cold that it didn't matter if I was catching fish - I wasn't - it was too cold to enjoy. So turned around and came home.
I had a lot of work this week, and I made myself a nice office area to work in. It's the first time in over 20 years I've had a real home office. It's SO nice! And there's enough space that I was able to create an area for working out - I have mat tiles laid down and some equipment, it's nice. And looking out and seeing green trees is so nice, it's really a beautiful area with a certain rustic quality that I like, surprising for how close it is to everything.
I was supposed to get a replacement kayak, a "real kayak," after the inflatable died. Didn't happen. Amazon lost the fucking thing (how do you "lose" a kayak...?), and it was a pain in the ass getting a refund on it. I've got another one in the pipeline for when I go back in January, we'll make this happen somehow. So I had to get creative on non-kayak, non-surf-fishing alternatives. Fort Pickens Pier works well. The area around Graffiti Bridge, not so much. The area is kind of a dump and the fishing isn't that good, at least the area between the railroad tracks and the main bay. Maybe kayaking out into the bay on calm days would be okay, but from land it's a waste of time, Navy Point is better. So is Big Lagoon. Prettier too, that matters a lot to me.
Spent a lot of the trip bagging trash the tenants left behind that the cleaners just tossed into the side yard by the curb, un-bagged. By the end, everything was in bags, at the dump, or in the trash bin. It looks MUCH better. One more visit and that nightmare will be over for sure.
Also rediscovered the joy of mowing lawn. I haven't mowed a lawn since the last time I owned a house, over 20 years ago, and that was a postage stamp yard. These front and back yards are big and the weeds thought they owned the place. But these new rechargeable electric mowers work really well, cut that shit down to size and the place looks MUCH better now.
But it was an undertaking. It's a lot of yard and a lot of grass. But I did it and it felt really good, very satisfying. It feels good to do yardwork for your own house, especially with equipment that is really easy to use.
So, exhausting but relaxing and satisfying. The house looks and feels much better, I had some good success fishing and learned a lot, forced myself to try different things. I even resurrected the bubble bucket for the shrimp, the one I originally bought but never used. It worked great.
I found a way to catch some cooler-filling fish, even if they're not "target species." Still looking to crack the code on sheepshead. I got one bite on the fiddler crab and that was it. So that'll be my goal for January. And now I've got the holidays and a crazy few weeks at work, so I'll be ready for a recharge come late January.
Still waiting on the MRI for my knee. Got a message from my Taekwando master that they miss me. I miss them too. Kind of frustrating, but hopefully can resolve that problem and have a healthier 2024.
No comments:
Post a Comment