We went to our neighbor's son's 9th birthday party tonight and the wife's parents drove down from New Jersey to Richmond to surprise the kid for his birthday.

The father/grandfather, Pop-Pop, told me an interesting story.

This summer he and a friend were fishing off the coast of New Jersey when the boat lifted up and slid to one side.  They thought it was the wake from another boat when they turned around in time to see a whale's tail up in the air along side of the boat.

It seems a whale came up for a blow and hit the boat.

Lucky for them there were not tossed into the water.

A lot of the boaters around them followed the whale, as did they, taking pictures.

I have never seen a whale in person but I bet it was one surprise to have one hit your boat and be that close to the animal.  He did not know what kind of whale it was.

Have any of you readers seen a whale ?

I HAVENT WOKE UP WITH ONE SINCE I CLEANED UP MY ACT

I've seen a ton of Orcas up in wahsington and alaska, no other whales that I can remember though.

We encounter whales all the time. If you google "stellwagen bank, cape cod bay", you'll see that this is one of the prime feeding grounds for numerous types of whales including the largest and very rare Wright Whale which I was fortunate enough to witness on 2 diffent days. Amazing.

We often will see the whale watching boats approach on the horizon and it gets you excited because that means the spotter planes have told them that the whales are surfacing and on their way to the bank (the bank is a canyon wall, where the bottom comes up from 380 ft to 120 ft, fish use boomerang shaped ridge to corral bait) to feed. This usually means the tuna are nearby.

Whales=tuna

ok so funny story.

We had been on the bank about 2 hrs, it's about 6am (it's a 1 hr run), sun just came up and the air is warming. I break out my travel pillow and lay on my back up on the bow. Pilot whales (small) surface and blow all day long, they are harmless and often come close and check you out, surely not afraid, just curious.

Well, I was just about fully dozed off and I hear another blowhole being cleared, but this one is loud. About 5-7 seconds later, we get rained on by this oilly, nasty, dead fish ranking snot stuff. I had that smell in my nose for a good week. I couldn't scrub it off my body for nothin.

We hit 4 fish that week. (6 days) We were the highliners of the month and was known that season as "Mr October",lol I guess you could say we were "fishy"....in short,...

Whales=Tuna but nobody will want to be within 10 ft of you for a week!!

I HAVENT WOKE UP WITH ONE SINCE I CLEANED UP MY ACT

When I clicked on this topic, I somewhat expected it to be a story of a night at the bar gone wrong.  

That would scare the you know what out of me.  

Wow, you guys are lucky. I would love to see a whale. I have been tuna and mako fishing many times off the coast of Virginia and Maryland and while I see tons of porpoises I have never seen a whale. Cool stuff.

You just have to sneak out early so no one sees you and don't put your shoes on until you get outside,lol.  

We'd see pilot whales and dolphins coming up behind the boat as we dragged the net aboard fairly regularly, maybe all of ten feet away.  They'd look us right in the eye, I swear.  Neat to watch them eat as we threw the by-catch over the side.

Got to see some humpbacks on a couple trips.  Never saw one actually breach, but they'd roll along and show all their flukes as they dove down.  Very cool animals to see in motion.