Growing up in South Florida and owning a couple of boats I know that especially in late July and August the sea can be as flat as a pancake one minute and a thunderstorm can whip up 40-50 mph winds and seas up to 12 feet a few minutes later.

I had some friends who were blue water sailors. They did the around the world thing in a 45' sloop. Their description of sailing was this: "Endless hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror".

I used to fish a lot when I was younger, but I quit when the fishing got comparatively fished out.

Back then you could catch up to 4 Snook a day, 365 days a year, as long as they were at least 18". There was no closed season on any fish, snapper, Snook or anything else.

We threw back fish like Amber Jacks that people now take home to eat because they didn't taste as good as the other fish that were so plentiful.

In the fall, we used to be able to stand on a pier in the Hillsboro Inlet in Pompano Beach with a dip net, and in an hour or two dip out a freezer full of shrimp.

We'd freeze some for bait, mom would clean the best ones for many future dinners, and we'd use the live ones to catch Snook.

And if nothing else was biting, you could put a sinker on the line and pull out snapper any time you wanted.



I spent any an evening across the inlet from this light catching Snook, Snappers, Lookdowns, and Moonfish on the docks where the fishing fleet moored. Before the influx of northerners, we were allowed on the piers, as we respected the boat owners' property and never touched the boats or lockers - we cleaned the fish on the dock and then cleaned our mess when we were done.

By the time I graduated high school, the population boomed, and a few people ruined it for the rest of us. No trespassing signs were put up. They also replaced the wooden turntable bridge with a concrete drawbridge and the fish didn't like hanging out under that bridge as well.

By the late 1970s it was over for me. It took too long to get a bite. It became an exercise in patience, and I just don't have that kind of patience. That's when I went to a sailboat. It gave me a different reason to be on the water.

I no longer own a boat but live one lot away from the Intra-Coastal waterway. It's a 2 mile wide lagoon here so I'm still near the water, and that soothes me.

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Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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