Gulf Shores Trip Day Five

The sun worshippers were not nearly as happy as I was to see the sun go on Sunday morning. The only problem was the rain and high winds that came along with the clouds. We still made the most of the weather, and started the day of right by cooking up a huge breakfast.

Since the beach was not pleasant to be on, we hit the gulf shores zoo. Its a small zoo, but perfect for the kids. They got cups of zoo puffs to feed many of the animals.

Then we headed to the pool for about an hour. The pool has a wood fence around it which blocks the wind nicely. After the pool we all hit nap time for a couple hours. Then we headed out to our fishing spot at the pass. It was stormy, windy, rainy, lightningy, and thundery outside so we were very surprised to see 6 guys spread out and in our spot we had found. Its amazing how fast word travels when your catching lots of big fish!

We set up shop about 30 yards down the way, since we were too nice to cram in. We figured we could wait them out with the nasty weather and all. Anyhow we set out our big rigs and then passed the time by catching white trout, flounder, and some crazy fish.

We filled up the cooler completely with nice fish, but were kind of disappointed to not be able to fish our honey hole for the big reds. We finally went in at 9 pm.

The guys who set up shop right in our spot were not friendly at all (that is putting it nicely). A couple of them I recognized from scoping us out the night before, which is no big deal, but they brought in several friends to keep everyone away. We just stayed away and watched them catch 5 big huge redfish. We still had a chance at hooking up in the spot we were at, just not nearly as good of a chance.

Monday we plan on taking it easy and finally resting and relaxing before heading for home early Tuesday morning. We will hit the beach and I am sure we will do a little fishing, but just for an hour or two as an activity for the kids.

Gulf Shores Trip Day Four

This is our fourth day down in Gulf Shores, Alabama. It was a tad bit windier than the first three days, but the sun is still shining and its 80 degrees. Not ideal fishing weather, but absolutely perfect for playing on the beach and in the pool!

Justin and I headed out in the kayaks at the crack of dawn. It was a tad bit eerie getting in the kayaks before the sun came up, but we said we are either going to have a great time or have a great story to tell later on. We paddled 3 miles along the gulf chasing birds and looking for deep holes. The pompano and flounders were not kind to us this morning, but we did catch some nice ladyfish and a couple of crazy looking lizard fish.

The lizard fish are only about a foot long, but they look prehistoricly scary. We kind of joke that they are fish that can kill you 21 different ways with all their venomous teeth, fins, spines, and googly eyes. They may in fact be harmless, but I'm not going to touch one to find out.

So we ended up 3 miles away and the wind and waves kept getting stronger and stronger as the morning progressed. Running on empty, we didnt have enough gas in the tanks to make it back to our place. The kayaks were powered by 280 horsepower super human engines, but they just werent strong enough to make it home! Mommy had to come get us in the van. No pics from this adventure, we left our waterproof camera at home and boy are we mad we did!

Spent the rest of the day swimming and playing. Have lots of pics of this stuff on other peoples cameras that I will post later. I dont have any of that stuff on my camera for some reason. My camera is a special fish camera 2033 dxl limited edition. It only is capable of taking fishing or food related pictures.

We headed back down to Perdido Pass at 4 pm and boy did we have fun! My dad and Mae caught a whole bunch of white trout and Justin caught this enormous bull redfish:


Jim something or other has been fishing his whole life, but hasnt been redfishing much. We showed him the ropes on how to catch pinfish for bait and it wasnt 30 seconds after he chucked his first pinfish out into the current when this mega bull red pounded his bait! Just as we were gaffing the fish, his circle hook was pretty much bent straight!

Here are some pics of the white trout fishing. We caught some dandies:

We didnt stay very late because our stomachs were hurting and growling for some reason? I couldnt figure out why all of our stomachs had this weird achy rumbling feeling at the same time, until I realized we hadnt eaten anything for like 7 hours! I did some research online and it turns out that hunger is a pain that occurs when you need to eat food. Brook and I quickly remedied that strange feeling with some bacon wrapped jalepeno stuffed shrimp and some pecan encrusted grouper.

Oh yeah, first we had to have Wingtzells Oyster House get some food right out to us while waiting for our entrees. Here is what is left of the world famous tangy buffalo syle fried shrimp:

Finished off the night watching the rest of the Missouri/Oklahoma game and all of the highlights from the college football games. Tomorrow we are taking the morning off from fishing (fedi, we got a whole cooler of meat for ya already!) I am going to cook up a feast for breakfast to ensure 'hunger' does not occur at all on Sunday. Then we are headed to go see some alligators at the zoo. Lord willing we will be back at the pass trying to get an even bigger Bull Red!

Gulf Shores Trip Day Three

Anyhow today was great! We caught a whole bunch of big tasty fish. We jampacked a whole bunch of fishing and swimming from before sunrise to well after sunset. We started fishing off the beach in front of the condo. Then we swam and built sand castles for awhile before heading out in the kayaks during the middle of the day. About 5 pm we headed over to the bridge at perdido pass to fish the high tide by the pilings. We caught some serious fish at the bridge! We finished off the evening with some fried crab claws, shrimp, and seafood nachos from Live Bait.

Here are the pics from the morning beach fishing. This is my sister Amy with a small bluefish she caught all by herself!


Here is our spread on the beach:


Shaeya is reeling in one of many ground mullet:


Here is the aforementioned ground mullet:


The guy fishing right next to us caught this shark. Of course we had to get a picture of it. You make lots of friends while fishing on the beach. Especially when we are doing alot of catching, fisherman (mainly old guys) come on down and set up shop right next door. Its no problem in the Gulf, because there is plenty of space and plenty of fish in the sea. Its almost better to have more bait in the water, and I have learned plenty from the old fisherman.



Now picture yourself 1/2 mile from shore fishing in a small kayak/boat chasing jumping baitfish with birds diving in the water and dolphins jumping just 15 feet away. Now picture your small boat capsizing with a big wave.... I have never seen Justin move so fast as he did that moment his boat flipped. He had his fishing pole, glasses, hat, paddle, and tackle box gathered up and back in that boat faster than I can blink. It was great.

There are tons of schools of baitfish just off the beach. The big fish are chasing them up to the surface and the birds are dive bombing them from the air. Anyhow Justin and I decided we needed to try and get out to them so we rented kayaks from the rental place across the street. They worked great and we went over a mile offshore in these little boats and we caught some real nice fish. Obviously the highlight was when Justin capsized. Here is a pic of the boats:


We actually caught these flounders from the kayaks. They were the only edible fish we caught so brought them in on stringers and we were able to get pics of them.

Ok, here are the pics from fishing at Perdido Pass. We catch small pinfish (about the size of bluegills) and then put them on the big poles and chuck them way out into the current. Here is the biggest fish of the trip so far! It was a 24 lb redfish that my dad caught. Talk about a battle! This Bull Red hit a 6 inch pinfish like a ton of bricks and took off running!

Justin caught this scary looking fish that we actually couldnt identify. We used plyers to get the hook out of its mouth.

While we wait for the big poles to get hit by the redfish and sharks, we pass the time by catching bunches of these white trout on Berkley gulp shrimp. Just put the fake shrimp on a jig head, cast it out, and slowly reel it in. They are so easy to catch that Mae was catching them all by herself! I don't like to eat them too much because they do have a flavor, but they are a delicacy to many people. My uncle Fedi absolutely loves to eat them, so we will be bringing him home a whole cooler full of these fillets.

They got some teeth! Noah has some teeth too!

Here is the remainder of the seafood nachos and fried crab claws. A great way to top off a full day of playing down near the Gulf! We also had some fresh ground mullet and whiting from our morning trip to go along with the meal.

Gulf Shores Trip Day Two

Today was 81 degrees, calm and sunny here at the beach. The tide is just on the last day of neap tide and will start moving much better for the rest of the week. I watched the kids this morning so Brook could sleep in till 9 am, but then it was out to the beach with the whole herd to fish and swim for the rest of the day.

My sisters and sister in law with all of their kids are all down here for a couple more days. Lots of cousins to play with on the beach and lots of kids to reel in fish. The fishing was fairly slow, but we did catch some real nice pompano, whiting, and lady fish. The pompano were the biggest surprise to show up today. They are spectacular table fare, wonderful to eat, great tasting, and very pleasing to my taste buds.

Here is Noah with the first pompano! You can see how calm the sea was today:



Tyden got to reel in the second one! He was happy for the pic, but I told him not to smile so much and this is what we ended up with:



Shaeya didnt get to reel this one in, but she really wanted to be on the website. Grandpa greg got this one:



Barb landed the last pompano of the day. It was a beast of a fish!


We also caught some nice ladyfish from the beach. They taste like poop mixed with feces sprinkled with diarhea, but they sure are fun to catch. They jump and run and are just great fun.




We had a few fish break off our lines, which is pretty typical. A few teethy bluefish and a shark. We also had a 50 lb stingray up to the beach, but didnt want to bring it all the way in. The kids were pretty excited to see that baby!

We caught the fish today using dead shrimp and cut up pinfish for bait. Waves were calm so we didnt need much weight. We just plopped the rods into the rod holders and sat back and relaxed on the beach all day long.

About 6 pm we packed everything in and headed inside. Brook and my sisters went out for dinner while us boys stayed back and watched the kids and made our own dinners. Fresh pompano sandwiches seasoned with garlic pepper and butter. Topped with cheese and a bit of tartar sauce on toasted bread is as good as it gets. Well, actually served with a side of fried cajun crawdaddy's is as good as it gets!

I actually cook the pompano fillets in the microwave. Sounds kind of crazy, but I learned that recipe a few years back while staying overnight in a fairly small 30 foot boat out on the ocean 100 miles from shore. We had a microwave on board, some seasonings, a loaf of bread, and 100's of lbs of fresh fish. Just simply season the fillets, cook them for 3 minutes, add your cheese and cook them for 20 more seconds. Thats it. Try it! Here are some pics:

Here are those fried crawdads from the seafood joint about 150 yards down the beach!


I ate so much fish and crawdads that I couldnt even take a bite of the ice cream everyone else was eating. Fat and Happy, those two words just sum things up real nice.

Tomorrow the tides start moving and that will hopefully get the redfish fired up! I will be out well before the sun comes up trying to hook up with a Beast! I have a deep hole scoped out about 100 yards down the beach from the condo that I will be fishing. Saturday morning I will head out to fish the little lagoon pass because the water will be pouring out into the gulf first thing in the morning. Tomorrow will be a bit better fishing than today, but Saturday should be the day to spend actively fishing!

Gulf Shores Trip Day One

We hit the road at 3 am and stopped in Morton 20 minutes later to drag Justin out of bed and on towards the gulf! Thirteen and a half hours later and we were on the beach! Before we even went up to our condo we were all running for the ocean immediatley upon arrival. Noah's eyes were the size of golf balls when we were looking out at all the water. He was truly in awe and that was neat to try and explain. Anyhow, we had 2 hours of light left and put them to good use. Noah drove his tractor up and down the sand.

He also looked at me like I was crazy when I told him to get into the hole I just dug so I could bury his legs. We finally coaxed him in:

Drake loved the sand too! Way more than I thought he would. Brook was supposedly taking a whole bunch of pictures of Drake in his little hole with Justins phone, but instead we ended up with 7 of these short video clips. The pics would have been great, but at least we got something to remember his first time playing in the sand:

Justin was able to snap a few still images from his phone and just emailed them over so here are some of those pics of Drake playing in the sand afterall:

Mae and Brook weren't nearly as into playing the sand right away like us boys were. Mae was more interested in finding her cousins who were already down here. After we finished playing on the beach we unloaded all our gear, purchased fishing licenses online, and dumped the kids with their grandparents and headed out to Bahama Bobs for some food!

Since I already had a few boxes of $.99 spicy chicken nuggets from Wendy's for lunch, I was more in the mood for grilled Mahi Mahi sandwich than for my traditional fried shrimp or cajun crawfish. Here is that sandwich cooked and prepared to perfection:

For those who havent met me yet in person, I am actually a pretty large 285 lb individual. Since birth I have always been husky or big boned or double xl or however you want to candy coat the term BIG. Anyhow here is a pic of that sandwich disappearing pretty rapidly. Yes I have a big head and some big hands too.


This crayfish sandwich would have been my second choice:

The shrimp sandwich was my third choice. Brook and Justin were pretty embarrased of my taking pics of their food, but I am kind of used to being looked at funny by other people in public.

So there you go, the highlights from day one of gulf shores trip. Tomorrow I promised to let Brook sleep and I will watch the kids instead of going fishing early in the morning (the tides are bad for Thursday morning anyways....dont tell Brook, she thinks I am just being a great husband sacrificing my first morning of fishing for her.) It will be weeks later before she reads this and I will already be a hero husband and father for this whole trip at least!

These days I am not able to just fish nonstop, so I need to fish much smarter to maximize the time I do have. When a good tide coincides with the sunrise or sunset that is the time to be fishing in the gulf. I actually have those times and days written down for this week and will be hopefully coordinating all of the family activities and fishing trips for the week to be able to spend most of the best times on the water. For sure without a doubt I will be on the water Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning well before the sun comes up, those times will potentially be dynamite. There are quite a few other good times throughout the week, and I will be fishing at least a bit every day, but I definitely dont want to waste all of my alloted fishing time before those dynamite days!