Tidelines – June 23, 2011
This is the first issue since Father’s Day weekend, and my Father’s Day fishing trip this year consisted of one under-sized flounder. The day, though, was memorable in many ways. The fishing part of this year’s Father’s Day was actually just a by-product of my kids’ (Owen, age 5, and James, age 4) main interest of late—crabbing.
In preparation, we first bought crab lines from our friends at Seaview Crab Company, and our purchase included a little negotiation for fish heads and fish scraps.
Then later, on the way to a family dock on Howe Creek, we stopped off at Tex’s Tackle to pick up a crab trap and a cheap crab net. This time it was the boys’ turn to negotiate with me, and they left the store with a laminated fish guide (James) and bird guide (Owen). The crabs cooperated that morning, but the boys’ interest faded well before there were enough to warrant getting out the steamer pot.
We started out practicing our net technique, trying to focus on being quiet, smooth, and sneaky enough to get the crabs before they let go of the bluefish heads to swim back down out of sight. And while the boys showed early promise, they soon fell back into their regular routine of antagonism—fighting over whose turn it is with the net, and fighting over whose crab line is whose.
They’re boys, they’re brothers, and they’re close in age. Fighting and competition are like eating and sleeping.
However, in the midst of all my refereeing, we managed to go over how to pick up a crab without getting pinched. We threw the cast net (the boys are steadily improving on the 3-footer). We released a bunch of pinfish, careful of how to pick them up so that the fins don’t hurt, and even managed to find a few mullet (only a few and still very small). And we transferred mud minnows from the minnow trap to the minnow bucket, throwing back the ones far too little to go on a hook.
During the crabs, minnows, mullet, and pinfish, a 10” flounder hit a mud minnow we had sitting out on a Carolina rig. And that bite provided us an opportunity to practice holding a flounder. Owen jumped right in, though he wavered a little in confidence when reminded that flounder have teeth so watch fingers near the mouth. James, meanwhile, was happy to be more spectator than participant.
After the release of the flounder, my boys and I decided that we had accomplished enough for our morning on the dock.
One of my Father’s Day gifts this year was a snow cone machine, and the boys had red and blue snow cones on the brain. That same snow cone machine made Mommy a frozen margarita, and with cool drinks in hand the four of us headed out for a boat ride to Mason’s Inlet to start on an afternoon adventure that included, among a bunch of swimming and running, one hooked bluefish—correctly identified by James and his fish guide—and the spotting of an egret and a heron—mostly correctly identified by Owen and his bird guide.
That was my Father’s Day fishing trip for 2011: a great memory and hopefully progress made on bringing up the kids to be connected to the water for the rest of their lives.
My boys and I would like to thank all the little marine life that played with the Hurley family that day. And since I have a flounder trip planned for later this week, I’d also like to ask the bigger marine life to come out and play this time.
