Someone Stole My Supper!

Late this afternoon, I headed to the pier. The sun would soon be setting and with the cloudy sky, a beautiful sunset might be in the making! With my trusty old camera in hand, I sat on the bench waiting and watching. I was not there too long before I realized that fish were breaking all along the shore. It has been a while since there has been any fish other than a few small mullet in the Bay so this was a welcome sight! I watched for a few moments before reaching for the net. I was going to have fresh fish for supper!

As soon as I threw the first throw of the net, I knew that I had something rather large! I could feel the tug of the net and the sloshing back and forth of a large fish. Woohoo! Perhaps I would have my meal with just one toss of that net! I lugged the net up on the pier. Oh, drat! That was not what I wanted! Sure, if I was hungry enough, I would not complain but this was a Sheephead. The fish is edible (not the most tastiest..but edible) but it is just a pain to clean...literally! Those sharp, spiny fins will stab you quicker than lightning if you are not careful! Also, those fins make it almost impossible to untangle the fish from the net! After much shaking and lots of pulling and shaking of the net, the fish fell free. He would live to see another day! I used the toe of my moccasin to slip the fish back into the water.

Catching that fish caught the interest of one of the Pelicans. Gus decided that a closer inspection was due so he came down off of the post and waddled relatively near me. I kept throwing and in the next throw, I caught three mullet! One of these was huge! The two others..not so huge. Leaving the fish on the pier, I attempted to catch another large fish. If I could do that, the smaller ones could be set free. As I was flinging that net, the fish flip-flopped around on the pier..enough so that the Pelican forgot all about me! Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a movement and a flash of silver! I turned just in time to see Old Gus gulp down one of the smaller mullet and grab the other! Thief!!!!! My supper was disappearing fast! After downing the second fish, Gus sidled over to the largest of the mullet. He attempted to pick this one up, too, but the fish flopped over the side of the pier into the safety of the water. Now, I had no supper! I looked at Gus...I do believe he was trying to give me that "innocent look" as if to say "I promise...I was only looking at the fish! I do not know where they went!" Oh, well! At least one of us had supper!

"Baitstealer"!

The other day, I was on the pier and as usual was trying to catch my supper. I was being harassed by fish taking my bait without ever taking the hook..this was not fun as it would not put food on my table! This was not at all good! (Unless of course, I am on a diet! Then we could just say the fish were helping me..but that is not the case. I was just not catching anything!) I would bait the hook, toss the line and within just a few minutes have a bite. It would not be a "grab the bait and run" type bite, more of a "nip and tug, nip and tug" type. I could never set the hook. It is a good thing that I had plenty of food in the freezer because if I had to depend on this fishing trip, I would go hungry! After a while, I had used all of the bait minnows. I threw the net to catch just a few more but when I tried to retrieve the net..something large was in it! I could feel the fish pull against the net and when I pulled it near the surface water was being splashed everywhere! My goodness! I heaved the net up on the pier. Oh, no....I had thrown the net over the bait thief! In the net were two large mullet and one spiny fish..a Sheephead. A Sheephead is quite the common fish around piers and pilings where they feed upon the barnacles and small crabs. This fish has five or six black stripes on a gray body and has a row of spiney fins as a dorsal fin. Those spines make it one difficult fish to remove from a net! This one had flipped and flopped itself about so much that the fins were entirely tangled in the net. It took me about twenty minutes to untangle the poor fish with at least half of that being done in the bucket of water. I did not want to clean this fish..so I tried to keep it alive and not cause it any more trauma than it had already seen! I finally managed to disentangle the poor fish and toss it back into the water.

The Sheephead around the pier are usually around three to four pounds but they can reach up to twenty pounds. It is an excellent food fish if you do not mind being poked a few times by the spines. It feeds not only on the barnacles and small crabs but basically anything it wants including plants, shrimp, crabs, small fish and mussels. It is very adept at getting a bait off of the hook which accounts for my bait loss! This habit plus the striped appearance has given it a rather interesting name..the Convict Fish! It is also dubbed the "Baitstealer" for good reason! At least I knew what was taking the bait and if I wanted to catch these, I would need to use a smaller hook!

Tonight, there was another beautiful sunset on the Bayou. It was calm with only a few small ripples on the water. The sunset threw a gorgeous golden glow over the entire Bay..so lovely..so peaceful!

Spider Webs and Cast Nets!

~"The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and the spider web."~Edwin Way Teale

You know..Edwin Way Teale said it all when he said this. I was out and about early this morning trying to get another photograph of the sunrise. It did not happen..no sunrise this morning. Oh, I imagine it rose..I just could not see it for the fog that engulfed the Bayou. There was a complete "white out"! I could only see maybe twenty-five feet in front of my face! I was just thankful that I did not need to drive anywhere in this pea-soup! But despite the blurriness of the world around me, I could see beauty! There are spiders that make webs in the marsh every night. This morning those webs were dripping with jewels of fog droplets. I was mesmerized by the strength of the webs and by the intricate lacework that the spider had spun. Some were so off-kilter in their design that I made the assumption that some intruder had torn the web at some point. The spider had obviously made hasty repairs and had not bothered to match up the lines of the web. Hopefully, the poor trapper still caught supper and did not go hungry. Life must be hard for a marsh spider..what with high tides, birds and marsh critters constantly smashing their traps to smithereens. I can only think that a lot of patience is tested each night as the webs are rewoven.

Later when the sun did make an appearance, I was thrilled to see the number of Pelicans in the Bay! While on the pier earlier, I could hear the constant splashing of some diving bird but was not sure if it was Pelicans. I counted eighteen beautiful fishermen diving for Mullet this afternoon.

Speaking of Mullet, for some reason the Bay is full of these fish. It is a little "out of season" for them but I am not complaining! I have been going down in the late afternoons and casting the net to catch a mess. The first two days yielded enough for me to give my oldest brother some and then the third day, I decided enough was enough! I needed a mess of fresh fish! I caught six nice Mullet and then threw the net over a hefty sized Sheephead. I cleaned the Mullet for supper but the Sheephead managed to gain a reprieve and was let loose! The Sheephead is a spiny fish and is quite difficult to fillet so after its photo ops..it was slipped back into the water. Perhaps another day it will become a meal..but for today, it attained freedom.

Spider webs and cast nets..sort of alike when you think about it!