MARCH 5, 2009 “LOVING FLO’S”

Well, we’ve spent five days so far in my favorite fishing spot in the Bahamas. We’ve eaten some great fresh yellowtail snapper . . . “fishsticks” by the time I get them back to the boat . . . and I’ve had a blast! Unfortunately, I do mean “had”. This morning when I hooked my first fish, my good saltwater Penn Captiva reel exploded. It literally broke into pieces . . . metal failure from too much fun and hard work. Luckily, I had my Diawa trout fishing reel from home with me for a backup, but it was getting a little old and it’s awfully light-weight, so I knew if I hooked into any real lunkers, it wasn’t going to be up to the task. Five minutes later on just a small fish, the Diawa’s bale breaks. Uh, Oh, all I’ve got left is Autumn’s little 4-foot long kids rod&reel stashed down in a locker for the past five years. I dug it out; it had rusted away. I am officially out of business except for my Cuban hand reel that I use for trolling off of the back of the boat while under sail. Bummer! Guess what just moved to the top of my shopping list for next winter?
Since this is a really non-eventful blog, I might as well end it with a plea to everyone to shy away from the use of anything “plastic” when you do have a choice. It’s really sad when you witness firsthand what we’re doing to our planet with our plastic trash. Some of the beaches here are “clean, green, & pristine” as per their national motto, however, many of them make me embarrassed to be part of the human race when I see the trash washing upon them. The cruise ships should really be ashamed too. It’s really terrible. Glass seems to be fine; it quickly breaks up and is chewed back into sand. Steel is even OK, too; it rusts away amazingly quickly in a salt water environment. Wood, ditto. Plastics and synthetics of any kind . . . water & soda bottles, nylon rope, rubber shoes, toys, containers, barrels, bags, ball point pins, etc. . . .litter the beaches and they’re not going anywhere, EVER. There is now an area of floating plastic debris out in an eddy in the Pacific Ocean that is the size of Texas and it’s here forever. If you haven’t seen my favorite movie last year . . . “WALLI” . . . see it; the basic issue is that the earth became so covered with generated trash that there was no longer any room for people. It may be prophetically accurate.
Anyway, enough preaching . . . enjoy the good and bad contrasts in the photos above.