Saturday, June 23rd, the day before Debby, I had the pleasure of meeting my dad Dan and Uncle Mac over at Cedar Key for a fishing excursion.  I was a little worried because there was a tropical storm out in the gulf, but that didn’t deter my Dad and Uncle who had weeks before made plans to stay in Cedar Key that particular weekend.

I kept thinking the bottom was gonna fall out of the sky at any moment and the rains were going to engulf us, but luckily it never happened.  It was overcast and nasty for the entire day but at least it wasn’t blazing hot.  We headed to our usual territory and did some fishing.  High tide was late in the afternoon, around 4:30 pm, so it took a while before there was enough water to get in the creeks.  We fished the outer bars with mediocre success.  I caught two keeper trout that were barely over 15″.  Uncle Mac caught two or three really nice trout.

The closer it got to high tide, the closer we got to the creeks.  Uncle Mac caught a nice eating size black drum in between a cut that consisted of a bar with grass above the water line and a bare oyster bar that remained submerged.

A little before 4 o’clock there was enough water for us to make our way into the creeks. While we were inside my dad got lucky when a redfish had had enough of this cruel world and decided to commit suicide.  It could of happened to any one of us but we were lucky enough for it to be him (I say this as sarcastically as possible).  It was one of his major talking points for the rest of the weekend.

The Red was the only fish that was caught in the creeks, so we mosied on out to try some of the outer bars before we left.  Thats when we spotted a huge salt water gator.  At first we thought it was debris floating on the water but debris doesn’t sink and come back up.  I tried to get a decent picture but when you got too close he would submerge for a while.  He was finally close enough for me to get a lochness monster type picture.  I assure you he wasn’t a mythical creature.

The old men were getting tired so we decided to call it a day.  We still had fish to clean and food to cook so we headed to the house, which happened to be at the Old Fenimore Mill that weekend.  They have a pretty kick ass fish cleaning station so we headed there and fed the pelicans some fish carcasses.

We were lucky we got in when we did because as soon as we loaded the boat, the winds started getting wicked.  The tide was ridiculously high at that point in the day.  Most definitely due to the tropical storm that decided to just sit in the gulf for a few days.  We weren’t upset with our tally of four trout, a black drum and a redfish.  We ate pretty well that evening too.  Fried fish, fried shrimp, hushpuppies and cheese grits. I ate (and maybe drank) myself to sleep and was woken up early in the morning to Debby.  All in all it was a damn good time.