Good winter times…

Julia and I decided to hop a plane to South Florida to attend the Miami Boat show last weekend.  It was something we had talked about for a few weeks, the flights looked good, and we had been overdue in visiting some of our family that lived down south.  Not to mention, its one of the biggest boat shows in the world!

Friday morning, my aunt Kathy picked us up at the West Palm airport and we cruised down to the Fort Lauderdale to this awesome little community near the beach and pier: Lauderdale by the Sea.  After Kathy made us and incredible lunch and picked up my cousin Dominique from school, we all went for a walk on the beach and pier.  It was a little cool and rain, but it didn’t matter, we were in South Florida and going to the beach!  As we walked out on the pier, I naturally ask the dude working the pier counter what they were catching.  That was all it took to break into a 45 minute conversation and make a new friend.  Mike was a part of the Infinity Fishing Team in South Florida.  This group of crazy 20-some-year-olds travel all around South Florida catching monster sharks, rays, tarpon, permit and other species from shore!  Check out this video of a 10’4″ hammer head they caught off the exact beach we were just on!  SICK!

This YouTube Channel is incredible, I’m subscribing.  Time was limited on this weekend trip, but I am going to try to get back up there and hook up with these crazies for a hell of and adventure.

        The next morning, Julia headed down to South Beach to meet up with other members of Team Starcraft and see what this show was all about.   We got there a little before the doors opened as we heard parking and traffic for this thing was chaos, so of course we went for a walk on the famous South Beach…  Julia brought her smile.   The show was amazing; boats that can hydralically lower wheels and drive around the beach, every vendor in the world, a big game fishing room where I learned to rig a ballyhoo, the Palagic boys hooked us up with some sweet fishing shorts, and a crazy electronics room.  I was thinking, what else more than a few Lowrance HDS 12″ touches could they have in there??  After walking in there, I am convinced that you can turn your boat into a space shuttle with 70″ HD tv’s on Satellites, and Auto-Everything!  Wow.  And there were a lot more WOWs there.  I couldn’t believe how many 40+ foot center console’s with quad Mercury 300s on them there were.  People down there sure do like power and gas pumps…

It was great hanging out Robbie and the rest of the team at the Starcraft booth.  Those guys had a good mojo going on and it was great to see all the action on Starcraft’s fiberglass line of boats.   A totally different market they are in down there, but great to see how Starcraft being so successful in different lines of boats.

Saturday night, Kathy and Dominique met us at Haven, a very nice and trendy restaurant on South Beach that Julia’s cousin Jonny is one of the head chefs at.  I have never eaten or partied like this in my life!  We had a cocktails that they put liquid nitrogen in, it steamed as it was coming out because it was so cold, and the flavor changed as the drink cooled.  That went along with a duck burger with a quail egg on it.  Crazy trendy exotic South Beach I guess; certainly something I was not accustomed too but an awesome time non the less, and great to see Jonny.  Thanks for taking such good care of us Jon.

Sunday morning before we left, it was about 50 degrees out, but ‘honey bager’ style, I felt like I just had to go swimming while I was there as the ocean was in the low 70s.  I jumped in, and swam for a little while, the only bad part was getting out, but I didn’t really care, I don’t get too many opportunities to go swimming outside in February.  I guess some bum told Julia while I was in the water that I was going to get phemonia, those Florida people just don’t get us.

After the swim and a nice breakfast that Aunt Kathy made (thanks for taking such good care of us!), we got on a flight and headed back to C-town.  Sunday evening, I switched modes from South Florida to Steelhead mode, and prepped the boat up, picked up some waders, and got some spawn sacs ready to rock for a float on the Grand Monday.   Gary Zart, brother-in-law Chad, and myself headed east on the cold morning.  I assumed there would be slush, but also thought it would burn off late morning as the weather man was calling for 40 degree temps by late morning.  I was wrong!!  The 15 degrees overnight just never really allowed the river to warm up, and we were dealing with bad slush all day.  Boooooo!!  We did still manage to stick a few fish, but I bet it would have been a slaughter it the slush had burnt off.  Its just so hard to get a good drift and keep your bait in the strike zone for very long.  We still had a good time, and it was great having good sports like Gary and Chad in the boat for a day like this.  They both kept the faith all day and were rewarded with some nice fish.

Great friends Nate Daugherty and Tess Grove are tying the knot this coming weekend in Chicago, and I wouldn’t miss that for the world so I will be heading to the windy city this Friday.  If you are going to be in town, I would highly suggest attending the Vic’s Sports Center Open House.

Saturday, February 23rd from 10:00 am – 6:00 pm and
Sunday, February 24th from 10:00 am – 5:00 pm.

Check out all of the great boat deals, many vendors and info-packed seminars.  Always a good time…