SNOWED OUT

Home in Port Charlotte
Heavy downpour, mid day

I was scheduled to spend the week in Philly, Richmond and Newport News, VA. Instead I'm snowed out of my schedule. The area was blanketed last Friday and has more of the white stuff on the way for Wednesday of this week. My Monday flight was cancelled by Southwest so here I am. I spoke with my boss and he said he'd rather I be stuck at home than in a hotel on the road. I wasn't about to argue. He gave me some special projects to complete in the office. My honey has some special projects of her own to keep me busy. I've rescheduled the PA/VA trip for the week of March 1.

Boat sits on the lift, where it's been since December. We've had rough seas and high winds here for weeks on end. When the wind dies down for a day or so the air temperature is so cold I wouldn't want to be out anyway. We've got a cold front rolling through tomorrow that will keep our daytime highs in the low 60's to upper 50's. We're supposed to see a 30 something morning on Thursday.

I took two of the Penn reels I acquired from Rolando into Fishin' Franks to have them tuned up and re-spooled with new line. I'm going with 40 pound braid on one and 40 pound mono on the other. I have plotted out 15 different off-shore reefs I want to fish when the weather improves. Some are just a couple of miles off shore from Boca Pass (22 miles from home) and others go 10-15 miles out. I'm very excited to see how the new color fishfinder does out there. There are a few 35 miles out but I will leave those as last resorts for now. One is a 400 foot freighter called the Bayronto that sunk in 1919 in 100' of water.

I went to an off-shore fishing seminar put on by this Captain who runs a fishing school. I'd love to attend his 12 hour program but my schedule won't allow the 2 night, 3 week course at this time. I did pick up a new know from him, I won a tee shirt in a raffle, learned some off-shore anchoring tips and got inspired to go find some of these reefs. The long/lat numbers I have were given to me by the guy whom I bought my boat from. He paid for a book of them and later gave it to me.

My brother-in-law, Brian, is a career Navy man on his final cruise after nearly 30 years of service. He is on his way home from Thailand right now. In April he and my sister will visit us here and I hope to take him fishing. If we don't hit the reefs, the Tarpon should be running at Boca Grande Pass. The way this winter has been, it wouldn't surprise me if we get snowed out of that trip too.