More Dog Island

Saturday 4-25-09

We moved to the east end of Dog Island First thing this morning. Towed the dinghy.

Anchored in a quiet cove where nothing could possibly go wrong.

Our location is

29 48.714 N 84 35.091 W

This is our turnaround point--as far east as we go. We'll start back west tomorrow. We've traveled a greater distance on this trip than we did from St Pete to the Everglades.

There are cars on this end of Dog Island. They bring them over on a ferry. Still don't see any roads. The cars are all parked in a lot where the ferry lets them off. There's also an airstrip on the island. Today three small planes exactly alike took off together. Useppa has a fleet of one design sailboats..................dog island has one design airplanes.

When we started our trip, we were listening to the Coast Guard broadcast from New Orleans, Mobile, and Dauphin Island. Now we get the St Petersburg station. All week they have been looking for a 36' trawler "Phantom" that's overdue on a trip from the Bahamas to Houston, TX.

Today was fishing day. I took the dinghy out with my Gulp Shrimp and caught quite a variety.

I was really fishing for redfish. I finally caught a few small ones.

Over the past few months, I've seen several obituaries where the photo in the newspaper of the recently departed was of him holding a fish he had caught. Of course it was a "special" fish. Probably his favorite species. I told Pam I thought that was a good idea. She should do that for me. However, I had not yet caught that "special" fish. That "obituary" fish. That's both a good news / bad news kind of thing. It means I haven't caught a great fish yet, but it also means it's not my time to go yet either.

That was before I caught this redfish today. Now I'm worried......................................This might be my obituary fish.

I think I'll send this photo in to the Berkley Gulp Shrimp people and they'll probably set me up with a free travel coach, a flats boat, lots of free clothing etc. and send me to the redfish tournaments.