Day 15 : Fishing Seaweed

Crystal River

Thursday, October 12

We decided to stay in Crystal River for another day to fish and do sea trials on our autopilot.  Autopilot checks out perfectly (woohoo!) then we head to a nearby fish haven.  We drop in our poles and troll along. Turns out in this fish haven it’s a lot easier to catch seaweed than it is fish.  We didn’t catch any fish, only a bunch of seaweed so we reel in our lines.  As we do our fishing line gets caught up under the boat and begins to wrap around the starboard propeller.  Yikes!  With dive gear on the boat Jacob is able to suit up and dive in to cut the line and remove it.  If he’s going in, “why knot” suit up the kids also. 

They get a refresher in diving and get in the water.  Jacob enters the water last.  By this time Joie realizes the visibility is terrible, possibly 1-2 feet, and decides she doesn’t want to go under.  Joie and Jayden hang out in the water while Jacob cleans up our fishing line mistake.  Once that’s all cleaned up everyone jumps back on the boat including Jeeno.  Of course he had to go for a swim too!  We really wanted to catch a fish for dinner so once we get back to Twin Rivers Marina we buy some live shrimp, borrow some poles, and start fishing off the dock. 

 Jayden almost catches a Shnook. The key word here is almost. No luck fishing, but Jayden and I were startled by a manatee.  It came up for a breath of air right by the dock.  At first, we thought it was a gator.  Our neighbors/dock masters gave Jacob a ride to the store, store bought fish it is…we grilled up our fish and some steak with our neighbors.  We also prepared baked potatoes, so yummy!  Our parting gift was a dozen fresh farm eggs!  Everyone all around has been so giving, a quality that the Vegas desert often dries up.