Fishing with Grandma & Steve

Grandma Cindi and Steve love to fish and are quite the fisherman, so we asked them if they would take us out on the boat to fish on Saturday morning. Now, I have never liked to fish, and Eric's never been a fan of fishing either, but we decided the kids would enjoy it, and it would be good for them to have the experience with someone who knows what they are doing (unlike us).
Now, let me explain why fishing on the island was much better than any fishing trip I've ever been on:

My dad LOVES fishing and used to take whichever kids wanted to go out fishing usually every Memorial Day and Labor Day plus other occasional times in the summer. My distaste of fishing stems back to then. It would start by getting up at 4am in the morning in order to drive an hour and be out on the boat by 5am. Well, that was the first problem since I am not an early riser. Then, you get to sit out there shivering and holding your fishing pole for hours on end and barely ever getting a bite. Which was the second problem...boring and cold. Then, if you do catch something, they are all slimey and fishy smelling. And lastly, the family rule was, "you have to eat whatever you catch". I have always liked the taste of fish, but with the trout we caught, we always had to pick out all the bones, which I hated. Fortunately, my dad always cleaned them all or I could complain a lot more. Anyway, after having gone a few times in my youth, by the time I was a teenager I realized there were much better ways to spend one's time and usually opted out of the fishing trips. I haven't been since then.

Now, when fishing on the island, the best time to fish is when the tide is low, but the important part is that we didn't head out until about 9 or 9:30am...so no getting up early. Second, it was plenty warm and we caught our first fish within a couple of minutes and continued catching them every few minutes the whole time we were there...so no boring or cold, and it was even overcast, so not that hot either. Third, well, they still were slimey and fishy smelling, but I didn't even smell it and Grandma Cindi and Steve handled the fish so we didn't have to touch them...what a deal! And lastly, Grandma and Steve cleaned and gutted them, so we didn't have to do that either and the mangrove snapper that we caught are delicious and no picking out bones.

Our family ready to head out on the boat for some fishing.

Grandma caught the first fish within the first 2 minutes of putting her line out. Everyone was excited about the first catch since our kids have never really fished before. Jarem and Tessa giggled as the fish came out of the water. They are our animal lovers.

Tessa reeling one in...

Alex caught a gruper (sp?).

Here's Tessa with her mangrove snapper.

This is Eric's first fish. He caught several fish, even some when he threw out the line himself.

While Jarem giggled and laughed at the first several fish caught. He was a little bored after awhile because he was hot, but Grandma took care of that pretty quick as you'll see a few pictures down.

Another fish for Eric and Steve

And Alex catches another snapper

Since Jesikah was the only one (besides Jarem) who hadn't had a chance to reel one in, she was promised the next one.

Yes, Steve felt this one tugging on the line, and even I managed to reel one in.

Jesikah finally getting her chance

She's excited about what she caught...another snapper. They are in season now, and really quite a pretty pink and brown fish, if you can call a fish pretty.

There she is with Steve and her fish. I think this one was the biggest snapper we caught. They have to be a minimum of 10 inches to keep and we did throw several back.

Here was Grandma's good idea to entertain Jarem. A bucket of water to dip his feet in. Alex and Tessa were dipping their feet off the side of the boat and Jarem wanted to as well. He was happy with his bucket for quite a while.

Jarem decided he wanted to sit in the bucket, so he could get more wet, and since we all had our swimming suits on, it worked out fine.

Another catch for Eric...I believe this was his first catch completely on his own. We used shrimp as bait. That interested the kids too as Grandma showed them how to put the bait on the hook.

Here is the same fish that Eric caught above. When the dolphins see you catching fish, they start to circle around the boat. They know that a lot of fish get thrown back and they want to be there to catch them. Here you can see them just under the water as Eric catches the snapper.

The kids were really fascinated with the porpoises. We saw a lot of them while we were fishing.

This was a mother and baby pair. We saw them a lot. The mother is missing part of her fin.

Here's the mother and baby pair again. The baby is the one closest to us and always swam right next to her mother just a second behind as they came up for air.

Tessa and Alex getting their feet wet.

And Jarem finally gets to help reel one in. Here he is petting the fish he caught. He was pretty excited.

Tessa and Jarem would hang onto this rope on the front of the boat and pretend they were riding a horse holding the reigns. It entertained them for awhile.

Looking back as Grandma takes their picture...

And the bucket of fish we kept. All in all it was a very fun and very successful fishing trip. I'm so glad that we went, and I might just go again now. Thanks to Grandma Cindi and Steve for a great time.