Daily Archives: July 13, 2009

My wife and I made a trip down to Panama City Beach in Florida – yes, the Redneck Riviera as it’s so lovingly called; soon to be defunct now that all the fleabag hotels are being torn down and replaced with pricey high-rise resorts – to visit family and get a little fishing in. Hell, I grew up there; well more over in Seagrove Beach, but PCB is only a hop, skip, and a jump away. We spent a lot of time there in my youth. It’s always good to go back.
When I return it feels like I’m home again. When I walk barefoot down the white, sandy beaches, my mind returns to my youth – surfing, sailing my Hobie Cat, snorkeling for sand dollars. Ah, I love to live it all over again.
Anyway, we drove down Thursday night, arriving just after midnight Georgia time. We decided it’s best just to leave at 6:30 from now on so we miss all of the rush hour traffic through Atlanta. Unless we leave at noon and take half a day off, we invariably hit it; somehow or another rush hour traffic in Atlanta seems to last from about 2:00 to 6:00. Don’t ask me how, especially when the normal work day ends at 5:00. Sometimes while we’re sitting there in bumper-to-bumper traffic I ask myself Where the hell are all these people going? And why aren’t they still at work?
I awoke bright and early Saturday to go fishing at one of the pilings beneath the Hathaway Bridge – the third incarnation of it anyway, the original wood bridge and the subsequent drawbridge have both been completely removed, leaving this new, massive fly-over. We had three rods with us and two spare leaders (rigs as I like to call them). Let me tell you, we were hooking some big fish. My sister’s boyfriend hooked the first one, fought it for nearly twenty minutes, and suffered Slack Line Syndrome just as the fish neared the surface. Later on he landed a red fish (his first) that was a couple inches too large to keep so he threw it back – win some, lose some. Somewhere along the line, three of our leaders were snapped off. After a couple of hours I finally hooked something, only to suffer The Syndrome as well. After re-rigging, I dropped my line back in and fought something for a few minutes before it dragged my line across the barnacle covered concrete and frayed about ten feet of my line before snapping it off where I tied the leader on. Like I said – win some, lose some.
Saturday we trolled fifteen miles out, in the one-hundred foot deep water for a few hours. Sad to say we came home empty-handed then too. Aside from catching a few pin fish and a catfish in the channel in front of the house, I wasn’t getting any action. My fishing poles were acting like bad wives – only putting out once in a blue moon.
Sunday morning my luck changed. We woke at daybreak and tried again. Below are the fruits of my labor. Be forewarned, in this first picture the camera was not being nice to me. This picture is a testament to the quality of a Blackberry’s camera.