N Florida Mike

? Lets see… I washed my suv once this year…so it is relatively clean now. My excuse is that it has 282,000 miles on it.

My dad was the best man I’ve ever known. He was from SW Virginia. Scots/irish ancestry primarily. He grew up poor esp. after granpa ran off. He was the oldest of the 3 siblings, and went to work young to support his mom and siblings. He was determined to have a good family, probably from his own bad experience. He met and married my mom in NC . He worked 7 days a week for a long time with the railroad. When I was around 7 , he started getting sundays off , and half day saturdays. Not long after that, he got the whole week end off. He started taking me to church, modeled a life of faith to me, how to be a man, and he taught me the basics of baseball and outdoor pursuits, esp. fishing. He worked me hard outdoors, which I still do a lot of. I work primarily because he set that example for me. He was a strict disciplinarian, but never abusive. The discipline he gave kept me out of a lot of trouble later on . He treated my mom like women should be treated, with love and kindness. He never cussed me out , called me a name or ridiculed me in any way. That’s says a lot because I was a handful as a kid. But He was strong physically and internally. He stopped my sicilian nieghbor once for yelling at me for missing a spot mowing his yard. He told him in no uncertain terms to stop, and he did. Last time that happened. He passed in 2008. I think about him nearly every day. Could write another 10 pages about him…

We’re under the gun again. Fixing to get another storm.

It’s a bluegill…

Ive never caught one on a jig, sorry @Catt. I’m going to try again this winter when the weeds clear up some…

It didn’t break the anchor lines, it just blew it up out of the lake, anchors and all. I wish I had seen it happen… NAS jax recorded a 61 mph gust during the storm. It is right across the river from us. But I don’t think that could have been strong enough to do that to my boat .

Thanks for sharing that @Catt Found out from niegbors we probably had a tornado go through, or maybe a downburst. Lots of trees down…

Thanks for sharing that Mike. The videos I watched about Ian didn’t do justice to how it really was, I’m sure. We got the remnant of it up here, but it was only a tropical storm by then…

I’ve been in the area all my life. What part of town are you in?

@Catt, you’ve been through some bad storms yourself. What’s the worst one you’ve been through? I’ve read some terrifying stories about Audrey…

Power is back on. Still lightning too much to go out and assess damage. @Mike L I would be interested in hearing your description of a cat 5 hurricane being that you were in them. The worst Ive been in is a strong cat. 2. Of course , we’ve gotten many tropical storms, and the outer effects of stronger hurricanes… I met a lady that went through Andrew, and she was visibly shaken in describing it…

We just had one here !!! The leading edge of it was something. I looked out when the power went off. Everything was going sideways. Then I noticed something I could hardly believe. My 12 foot jon boat sitting in the yard. That wind blew the boat up over the dock and out of the lake app. 15 feet , and 5 feet higher than the water.AND I had 2 anchors attached to the boat on the dock. A bucket 25 feet away on a table is still there. How high of a gust do you think it would have to be to do that?

“Offshore” fishing. And jig fishing. I’m best with soft plastics. Skipping is my favorite skill. I cast more accurately with spinning, but Im not bad with casting.

Caught this nice Tilapia in our church pond…

That actually is a good area …

Got to fish all morning in the home lake. I decided to depart from my normal morning pattern, and started fishing the north end . I caught 3 quickly in the first clear circle, throwing a yum dinger to the edge of the slop and reeling in slowly. Got to a deep hole and caught the biggest fish of the day ( 20 inch ) on the dinger. Best fight Ive ever had on a fish that size. Got 2 more at that end of the lake, still moving south. I decided to go down to the south end , but not much going on there. Got 1 on a fluke, and a couple on the UV Speed worm. Spent the rest of the morning fishing in the shade around the island, catching more on the speed worm, and the 2nd biggest fish of the day. I divided my lake into zones. Today I caught: 6 in the North zone 1 in the central zone. 5 in the island zone 3 in the south zone. Not a bad outing…

It takes time to build a trust. I will tell you specific baits that work and how to fish them, but I won’t give specific spots unless I trust you… I usually give more than most of my friends that fish because I’ve been doing it longer in the same area than most of them have. I don’t hold it against them. But once in a while… I was at church yesterday, and had a random conversation with someone Id never talked fishing with before. He told me his son had caught a 13.10 in our church pond 10 years ago. He told me exactly how he caught it, which was different than the way I’ve fished it. Guess where I’ll be focusing on in the days to follow ???

Just caught this one out back…

About a month after we got married I asked my wife when she was going to get around to washing my clothes…

Caught around 30 of these today in an hour or so…

Finally got out this morning with a friend after it rained hard the first hour of daylight. Got 13 total, mostly on watermelon seed super flukes, and a few on dingers. These were the 2 biggest.

I tried it 2-3 times in the early 80s, never when fishing though. The first time I tried it was home grown by my coworker. I was working on the farm and afterwards I lost control of the tractor and ran over a big blueberry bush I had to pay for out of my meager check, laughing the whole time… Hard pass for me too. I need to keep what few brain cells I have left !?

My guess would be 7-8 pounds. Nice fish !

I’ve been watching “weather nation”. No un necessary hype. The guys in the field aren’t acting all heroic or talking like it’s the end of the world. They speak calmly and realistically. The graphics aren’t as high tech, but adequate. The music isn’t all gloom and doom either. Think Ive found a new favorite weather station! The only places that equals Florida for hurricanes is Louisiana and North Carolina, where my cousins are. My mom passed away the week Matthew came through. There was lots of Flooding and tree damage along our coast. Then it went right up and hit NC in the exact area my mom was from. It took us nearly a month to have the funeral up there because of all the damage and flooding, bridges washed out, etc.

It’s going to be bad over in the “ big bend “ area. Up to 130 mph and still has a ways to go before landfall. They were saying the last major hurricane to hit that area was 1896 ! Its forecast to remain at hurricane strength all the way through South Georgia to the coast! Our winds were calm when I got up 40 minutes ago. Now up around 20 and growing.