The Perfect Day

                                                              

Have you ever had THE perfect day? Seems I have a lot of them but last Friday was definitely one of the most perfect. Tony and I went to Camp Getaway late Thursday afternoon and immediately went to Cuz's with our friends, the D'ilios, for some great seafood . Early Friday morning Tony got our fishing gear together and we headed out to try our new bimini for Teddy R. and dip a hook in hopes that with a little luck we'd catch a fish. The wind was a little cool with the boat moving but the sun was sparkling on the water like diamonds, gulls and black-winged black birds were singing and sailing on the breeze and I was enjoying it all with my sweetie. We headed to one of our go to fishing holes; the Gene Taylor reef; and found several boats already there. We anchored and Tony rigged my rod and reel. He baited my hook with one of the many kinds of artificial baits we try to lure the fish with. In the past none of them seemed to work very well for me. Seems the fish are always smarter than I am but catching the fish has never been the main objective; and that's a very good thing Martha Stuart. For me the end goal is to enjoy and savor the time Tony and I spend together. Last year was the first year that Teddy R. was launched and Tony was trying to work out any kinks. I got a little whinny because we didn't have a bemini for shade or soft seats like the pontoon boat. Sooo...Tony installed padded seats and a bimini (for my fishing comfort) so that we can fish longer periods of time without me being a whinny butt. OK- I digress; where was I? -oh yeah - I was ready for my first cast which usually ends up with my line getting tangled or getting hung up on debri. Hard as I try to be self su-fish-ent; it almost always ends up with Tony having to stop and come to my recue. He's always a good sport about it though. I cast a couple of times and so far so good except NO fish. I didn't see anyone else pulling anything in so my expectations were low. All of a sudden I felt him... I told Tony "whatever it is it's BIG". He (the fish - not Tony) began to strip my line and I was sure it would break before I could get him in the boat. I "played" him (see...I do know some fisherman terminology) for a little while and slowly but surely brought him right up to the boat where Tony could net him. A 24" 8 lb. redfish.  Woo hooo! I think Tony was more excited than I was since he always wants me to catch a big ole fish. Now we're cooking - I thought. I was ready to reel'em in until we reached our limit and had to stop while all the other fishermen (and women) in the other boats, who had caught nothing, looked on with great envy.  REWIND...we continued to cast about for a while with not even one more bite. Finally we had to admit that the dream of getting our own fishing show was looking pretty dim. We headed out toward Pass Christian, then to Grassy Point and stopped along the way to test the waters. Tony caught one nice flounder and I never got another bite.  In all we went about 30 miles that day. In the end we caught enough fish for supper, had a boat load of fun (if not a boat load of fish) and best of all I got to spend the etire day with my main squeeze.


The perfect day.