St. James City Vacation - Day 6

What a glorious sunrise! I woke up at 6 a.m. to be treated to this. After GG woke up and we had a light breakfast, I packed the cooler with some lunch and drinks and we headed out for our first full day on the water. The weather was awesome. It was breezy because of front moving in so we didn't even break a sweat all day! I know that sounds crazy in November...but it's been as hot as if it were May. We worked four different spots. The first one just drove us nuts! The fish were hitting all OVER the place...I'm mean really BIG fish were hitting. They just weren't hitting what we had :( Second stop...no hits. Third stop by the oyster bars.......snook were tearing up the bait...but no hits..no wait, GG did get a freaking Cat. We headed up the power lines and off to an island to the SW. Now I could feel this place. Beautifully clear water, mixture of grass and sandy patches. This spot held it all.....grunt, pin fish, yellow tail jack and GG caught two beautiful trout. They would have been dinner if the season wasn't closed....dammit! One of the trout was so big, it actually attempted to eat GG's pin fish! Amazing! And we were treated once again with a dolphin pod siting. This time there was no playing. They meant business as the swam along the shore feeding on the plentiful fish in the area. All in all, it was a wonderful birthday :) We came back to the house, unloaded and jumped in the pool for a cool, relaxing swim. Then GG sweetly cooked up a delicious steak dinner to celebrate.

St. James City Vacation - Day 5

With more work being done on the boat, we didn't get out on the water until late and I was getting restless and bored. There were so many things I'd wanted to do while here and now we were into day 5. So I'm guessing we won't be making it over to Sanibel again, no bike ride, no hike through the preserve for photos :( But hey...it's still better than a day at work anytime! While GG worked on the boat I said to heck with it and grabbed a pole to do some fishing from the dock. I caught a Snapper and a Cat (naturally). so I felt a little better. At least I'd finally caught something! ha! After the boat pieces were put back together, we headed out for this little island and fished for a couple of hours. Where I caught another Snapper, a Trout and another Cat. GG caught a couple more Cats. It was quite windy and we were having a hard time getting the anchor to hold. We moved around to the other side of the island to try our luck there. We didn't have any, but there was bait just boiling on top of the water. As the sun began to set it was an amazing sight as all of these birds came in to roost. I mean all species....pelicans, ibis, herons, egrets, spoonbills....flocks and flocks of them! It really was amazing. I wish I had a better lens so I could have captued them in the low light.

St. James City Vacation - Day 4

Thank the Lord...we were finally able to go out fishing today and the boat behaved itself very nicely. Daddy did a great job rebuilding the carburetors and putting it all back together.....with nothing left over! Woo hoo! We didn't catch anything but it was awesome getting back on the water and we were treated to more action with the dolphins and even saw some manatees and bald eagles! God, I love wildlife watching.

St. James City Vacation - Day 3

We took the boat out for another troubleshooting mission and were so fortunate that a pod of dolphin chose just inside the mouth of the canal for a playground. I never get enough of watching them! It was another day for being on land (other than the test drive) but we're very hopeful it will be thumbs-up for wetting lines today.

Some observations of the differences between May and November here on the island. No more mosquitos! ......but don't get too excited because they are replaced by the no-seeums who have no problem at all getting through the pool screen to eat you alive! I mean these suckers have torn me up. No amount of Caladryl is helping.

The second observation is the change in the bird population, along the canal anyway. You see a Heron, Egret or Pelican here and there, but nothing like in May when they are all over the place. I'll have to do some research and find out where they've migrated to. And speaking of migrating....the freaking crows are here! And I'm not sure they ever left the Tampa area. Is there a surge in their population or what?! BTW...I hate crows.

St. James City Vacation - Day 2

We go through it every year, and every year I complain that I hate it. Time change just stinks! Especially when you're on vacation because it cuts the day so short.

Today was a pretty lazy day with some aggravation thrown in. The boat has been out of commission for quite some time while getting some work done on the pontoons. While it sat, a whole lot of sun damage, dry rot and water build up has set in and it's going to need some TLC. My husband has been so busy that he didn't have time to really get it thoroughly checked out before coming down here, so we're having to do it now. No problem, we don't really care too much. We'd have to do it anyway and at least we're on the water relaxing. Hopefully, it will be running back to normal by mid-week :)

St. James City Vacation - Day 1

I don't know why we call to ask if we can "check in" early...we never make it any earlier than their posted time. We have all week to get our things together and yet we always find ourselves scrambling to finalize packing and then loading the cars and boat the morning we leave. So, once again, it was noon before we were on the road. It was a great trip down here, riding with Delilah's (my car) top down. Once here, it feels like we're home. We've stayed here twice before and fell in love the moment we stepped foot in the house and looked out the back at this view.

My worked-too-hard husband had to turn around and drive back to Tampa for a remote at the Dallas Bull, but I stayed behind and chilled with the computer and just relaxed. After I'd had several drinks and two cups of espresso, he made it back at 1:30 am. And then.....we slept like babies.