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So, last week I went to my Grandma's house in Long Island, New york. We did quite a bit of stuff in the water, it was very fun even though the rudder on our sailboat broke while we were still in the water on Wednesday x.x It's a good thing we were on the bay and very close to the park we left from xd I had a lot of fun. I got to go fishing with my dad and brothers in the bay on Monday. It's too bad there's a size limit on fish in New York, a fish there that you have to throw back would be a monster fish in any of the lakes around where I live. Anyway, I was talking about fishing with the guys. We had live bait- kippers, and some dead bait- squid and shiners. Crabs are really annoying, they steal your bait and you catch them all the time in the bay. My brothers and I caught about 25 crabs that day, that's only half as many as the daily limit for each person.... Of course we only ate the meat out of the claws which still took a while x.x We only caught five fish the whole time we were out and only one of them was a keeper. Five fluke, in case you don't know what those look like, I'll put a pic up so you can see how weird they look. The daily limit of fluke and flounder (they're pretty much the same thing) is 5 per person and they have to be at least seventeen and a half inches long. Mine was sixteen and a half, my dad's were sixteen and a half and fifteen, my older brother's were nineteen inches and fourteen inches, my younger brother didn't catch any unfortunately. I swear, the fish my brother caught had something against me, it kept flopping around in the bucket and splashing me and stuff, this thing has some pretty big teeth and that's the only reason it really scared me x.x It was pretty good though ^^;;; Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my dad caught this HUGE horseshoe crab... apparently you can keep those but I doubt they taste very good and I wouldn't want to eat something as cool looking as that.
Okay, so on Wednesday we went sailing across the bay to Sunken Forest, it's a pretty cool looking place. We stuck my puppy in her lifejacket and put her in the boat with us, she was so good. She slept most of the way to and from the place and only acted up a little when we first put her in the boat because she had no clue what was going on. I guess the waves rocked her to sleep ^^ She's so cute. So, after we got to the place, my little brother and I put some more sunscreen on and jumped in. That bay was so shallow really far across, I got to what was the equivalent of halfway across the lake closest to my house and the water was only waist deep, not to mention it was VERY warm, like salty bathwater. After we finished walking around and stuff in the water, we all took a walk on the boardwalk and we went to the ocean beach in this place. I did a little bit of body surfing until I got smacked right in the face by this huge wave. I had been trying to get past it so I could surf it in but I wasn't far enough and it broke right over my head and my older brother's. It sent water up our noses and sent us tumbling backwards. I think my brother did a faceplant but I was lucky enough to just get knocked onto my butt. The waves on that beach were the biggest I'd seen. Once we'd had our fill of that island, we got back on the water and started sailing back to Hecksher Park, where we lauched out of. It was about an hour into our trip back when we reached the edge of the park, it was a couple miles from where our van was parked, but it was still the right park. About a mile and a half from where the boat launching ramps were, our sailboat started turning in circles. For a few minutes we couldn't figure out why, but then my dad looked down and the rudder had broken. It broke off right where it hit the water, my dad and brother had to paddle back in towards the shore, it was a good thing we were pretty close to the shallows and not out in the middle of the bay. They managed to get us over to shore and the two of them pulled the boat while the rest of us, including the dog, walked along the water. There was a youth group using one of the buildings and they told us we weren't allowed to walk along the beach by the building they were using. My mom explained what happened and they let her go back for the van in one of their cars and get the boat back onto the trailor by a parking lot next to them. Then we went to McDonald's for dinner.... even though it was about nine o'clock at night.
Thursday was pretty nice, we got to sit around most of the day and do nothing while my mom and grandma were off doing who knows what. They got back around three ish and we just hung out for a little while and left to go to Captree Island at three thirty. At Captree they have deep sea fishing boats that go out for specific kinds of fish. We ate at Captree and got on a boat for Bluefish and Striped Bass, also known as Stripers. The boat left at five and it took about half an hour to get out into the ocean and find a spot where the Snappers (baby bluefish) were biting. Nobody caught anything for the longest time and we'd move to a different spot every five minutes it seemed, these guys did not like to waste time. One of the guys on the boat dropped his pole in the water, which is a forty dollar fine, and he tried to get it before it sunk down to the bottom. This guy was so stupid... he bent over the edge of the railing to get the pole with his friend's pole and ended up almost falling in. Only his ankles were on the railing but somehow his friend managed to pull him back up and some of the crew mates got mad at him. Oddly enough, this man reminded me of my uncle O.o He's even got the same voice, it's weird... So, I got the first catch of the day, yay for me ^^ unfortunately it wasn't one of the game fish so I didn't get to keep it. It was a Sea Robin, a pretty cool looking fish, it's got these really pretty fins, but it's face is kind of weird. I hooked this fish by the stomach which made for a harder fight than it would be if I got it by the mouth. Even though it was a pretty small fish, maybe eight inches long, it killed my wrist to try and reel it in. I got it with the hook just as it was swimming past, can you imagine how surprised that fish must have been? After another hour or so, people finally started catching fish. We had given up on the Bluefish (which are actually green O.o) and we were trying to catch Striped Bass instead. My mom caught the first Bluefish, it was the second fish caught that night, I think she caught the third fish of the night too. After catching the first one, the crew mate threw it on the floor to knock it out, that didn't really work, so he stomped on it's head eek I'm kind of glad I didn't get to see that... The second one she caught was right after she put her line back in the water and it was bigger than the first one. A lot of other people on the boat were catching those kind of fish. One guy had a Bluefish and it was getting attacked by something. When the guy finally reeled it in there was only a head and another person on the boat said he saw a shark swim by.. Kind of scary, huh? Eventually, my dad caught a fish, a Striped Bass, but it was too short to keep and they had to throw it back. On the way back to the dock, there was a crew mate filleting the fish for everyone and measuring which one was bigger. Everyone in my family had entered the pool, but only my mom caught any game fish and hers were some of the smallest. The filleting of the fish was kind of gross, but really interesting in a way. I'm not one of those sick people you see or hear about, it was just kind of hard not to watch it, everyone had crowded at the back of the boat to watch and get their fish measured. When the guy finished I went to sit with my mom and found out he'd gotten fish blood on the arm of my sweatshirt x.x I'm just glad it wasn't really MY sweatshirt but one my mom had won earlier this year.
Friday we went to the beach. My mom and grandma didn't come, so it was just me and the guys. The water was really cold and luckily for us, it was low tide. We walked along the beach for a while picking up shells and stuff, then my little brother found a sand dollar O.O It was so cool. I was under the impression that sand dollars were very rare, but my little brother found two, my older brother found six, and I found seven, I don't know how many my dad found, but he got at least as many as my little brother. At one point while we were walking, apparently we'd gone too far and into the part of the beach the nudists hang out on x.x I'm so glad there was something else to look at besides them... AND that when I looked up, all I saw was a butt and nothing more private. I kept my eyes glued to the water, still looking for more sand dollars. My little brother was freaking out the most about these guys and got my dad to make us turn around, back toward where we'd come from. Once the nude sunbathers were out of site, we stopped and put our stuff down. The two older guys laid some towels out and sat around while the little brother and I hung out in the little pool the waves had made. After a while the younger bro left to go lie down with the other two and I was bored x.x There was a sand bar across the other side of the pool thing and I should have bet money with my dad that I could wade across it, because I could. I got out pretty deep and came back, telling him I thought it was possible to wade across and he told me to prove it, so I did. I walked out to my neck and that's the only time my feet left the ground, I was trying to keep my head above the water and it got too deep when the waves came. I thought it was going to get deeper but I was wrong and I made it across, it's too bad there was nothing over there, I'm not sure how I would have brought it back anyways, but I had fun and proved my dad wrong at the same time ^^ There wasn't much else that we did after that, we went back to my grandma's and didn't really do anything for the rest of the day.
Okay, now I'll put pictures up of all the fish I mentioned.... and the horseshoe crab because I'm sure there are a few people who don't know what they look like.
This is what both a Fluke and Flounder look like.
I just think these animals look so cool. This is a Horseshoe Crab.
This is what the Sea Robin looks like.
Okay, I couldn't find any good full body pics of the Bluefish to show how big they are, but this is what they look like sweatdrop
These are Striped Bass, they're a lot bigger than the one my dad caught, but he got a baby one (it was at least the length of my forearm from elbow to fingertip)
Setrin Enaii · Sun Aug 21, 2005 @ 09:08pm · 2 Comments |
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