It's a whole New Year coming up but the end of last year was a great time for family.  This year, Erin and I flew out to Denver for Christmas where her parents and both of her sisters now live.

There was a foot of new snow on the ground and the entire Rocky Mountain range was a succession of jagged snow-capped peaks. As beautiful as it was, we passed on what would have been GREAT skiing as Erin was still recovering from arthroscopic surgery on her knee and I have been nervous about my knee and back for several years. Maybe later this winter...

Coming home on employee passes we wound up in West Palm Beach with our car in Orlando and our luggage in Houston. We took a shuttle home.

The next day we I drove the truck to Orlando so Erin could retrieve the VW and I could bring the big bags, which were now swollen with gifts and a couple of shotguns coming home to Stuart.

We could only grin and bear it when we were notified they had done us a favor and sent the bags to West Palm.

I got up at 4:30 a.m. the next morning and retrieved the bags - another 90 miles under my belt. Almost free, passes remain an adventuresome way to get around the country and the world.

I did go fishing. My neigbor, also a Peter, asked me to go with him and help him get some fish for his brother-in-law Tony.

My PLAN was to quickly get enough fresh caught Spanish mackerel for dinner for all of us. Then I thought we could try for some pompano and if that failed we could have fun with the still plentiful ladyfish.

There was a good sized fleet of boats off the Peck's Lake reef and the commercial guys were loading their boats by casting small gill nets on fish they had marked on their bottom machines.  Pete didn't have a functional fish finder/fathometer, so I watched for boats picking mackerel out of their nets and started fishing up wind from them, but out of their way. We started where they had been when they cast the nets. Small goofy jigs I bought from my neighbor Joey Massaro did the best.

Google "Capt. Joe Massaro" in Stuart, Florida, to get some of his jigs. They work great on pompano, Spanish mackerel, ladyfish and even snook, sea trout, and small tunas - and they cast a mile!

The pompano evaded us. The tide had gone dead before I had gotten our dinner. It was about to get hard dark when I tried the spot I talked about in the last blog where Erin and I had so much fun.

The spot did not let us down and we had  awesome action with bites on every cast, losing lots of jigs to their rough jaws chaffing the light mono leaders I use for pompano.

I have also been having fun, and paying for my own shotgun shells teaching some kids to shoot. I get a big kick out of kid's smiles when I help them catch a fish or bust a clay target.

Happy New Year  
peterbwright