Smartie's Bar & Grill #75

Closer look at the end of that pier, see the boats and blue water? Pics dont do it justice, emrald blue green waters.

 

I wouldn't begin to know how to fish those waters. I fished brackish water in lake Ponchatrain but other than that I caught some little brim like fish in Ft. Walton Beach. They tasted good. I am a fresh water fisherman. A lot of salt water fish just taste too "fishy" for me but love me some speckled trout.

 

I like fishing either way but I prefer salt water. I was pier fishing today with a half ounce egg sinker on a slip rig with fairly small baitholder hooks and pieces of shrimp for the mangrove snapper in about 15 ft of water. I got a BIG bite. It started peeling off my 30 pound braid. Like a dummy, the more it peeled, the more I tightened my drag.

Kinda forgot I was fishing light tackle snapper rig (mangrove snapper rarely get over a couple pounds) and tried to horse it in. Whatever it was, straightened my hook and was gone, possibly a snook, cobia or jack.

Now I'll never know. I like salt water fishing as there are so many species, you never know what bites next. Could be bait size, could be 30 pounds. I bleed and gut all keepers and put directly on ice. There is a world of difference in taste, some are just...mehh....others are ambrosia in your mouth.

 

If I lived near the ocean.....

 

I can head a mile down the road and fish the Peace river (very little brackish, at that point, only snook are almost the only salt species caught here) or head 25 or so miles south west and fish where the Peace crosses under I-75 and 41 in Charlotte Harbor....drive another 20 miles and the harbor meets the Gulf of Mexico. Been so long since I swam in it.

 

Not a fan of deer meat...and it is a lot less work just to buy okra

 

Potatoes can survive a light frosting. Corcubits not so much. You can try to cover them with plastic late in the day I suppose, but sometimes it is just easier (and cheaper) to reseed.

 

I battle the deer every year, and that's what finally led me to raised beds in an enclosure. Of course, they can leap a regular fence as long as they have a landing strip like my old garden bed. Talk about a false sense of (food) security, to only wake up one morning to have the deer strolling along the row of beans having a snack....

Perhaps the gods of veggies are trying to tell you something about okra. Like.... ICK!

 

You don't like okra?? If cooked right okra is a great veggie. My family like pickled okra, fried okra and okra gumbo. It might just be a veggie you have to acquire a taste to like it.

 

@Collateral Damage @politicalcenter how did you fare with the weather last night?

 

No thank you, lol. The texture and flavor just doesn't agree with me.

 

Just some rain and 35 degrees this morning. I'm in East TN, was there something I missed?

 

We got a lot of wind last night and about an inch of rain according to one rain gauge, will have to check the other rain gauge later this morning to see what it says. It seemed like more than an inch to me.

 

Any veg where you have to cook it "right" is generally disgusting. . Cook it right means 'hide its real taste' with
Oil, Vinegar, other strong flavours.

 

It must have went west of you. I have a tendency to believe the weather bureau before they get it wrong...lol.

 

Cooking it right is the secret.

 

A lot of weather breaks up around us, between the Smoky Mountains and the updraft pressures from the TVA lakes in the area, it does this Red Sea thing and pushes al lot of the weather past us.

 

So you have a sort of a "weather in Texas" thing going on too.

 

Orange groves here spend big $ to erect barbed wire fencing like cattle fence but build it on up 8 ft. I have seen deer leap right on over it.

 

Wind.. no moisture.. but plenty of dust... going to take the bikes along the river road this afternoon since the Kid is back from Mexico.

 

now I have to go finish prepping the B&B.. never tho't I'd be a housekeeper in my old age! LOL

 

Make it fun. Put in your ear buds, strip down to the boxers, and dance while you vaccuum!!

 

That's what they say about Brussel sprouts, but they're just bitter and disgusting. So many nicer tasting veg that you don't need to 'Cook right'

 

TMI

 

uh.. no! besides it's all tile floors.. mopping and throw rugs!