Skeet’s Beat – Thanksgiving with Friends

We’re back from our family Thanksgiving camping trip to the Northern California coast, and we had a great time. My brother Jim and his family were there and a couple of our friends as well, and it was a lot of fun to pull it all together with everyone for Thanksgiving dinner and fun and games.

We had some deep fried turkey and some seafood to go with it, and the food was excellent. The one thing we discovered while doing this though is that the more people that are there, the more kids we have to chase and the more messes we have to clean up. But, it’s so worth it.

We were hoping to load up on Dungeness crab, but the crab fishing wasn’t really good. We caught a few of them, but it wasn’t as many as we’d hoped, but there were other sea creatures that made it exciting. We went to Doran Beach and brought the shrimp pump and the poke poles.

We managed a few crab, one poke poled eel and played with all kinds of wildlife. We even saw a bunch of big starfish in the rocks when the tide was low. Oh yeah, we saw three small octopus, two of them in the water and one that Lea caught. It was about the size of my hand, and it was pretty cool.

We brought a lighted Frisbee and played outside at night and we even played some football on the beach. It started out as a game of touch football, but by halftime, it had turned into tackle. We were all covered in sand, and to be truthful, Kim and I are still a little sore.

We go home Sunday and cleaned up the gear and got ourselves organized for life. Today I’m packing up for my peacock bass fishing trip to Brazil with Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter of the St. Louis Cardinals and B.J. Ryan of the Toronto Blue Jays. My friend John Murray will be going, as will Ryan McCollough from Wright & McGill Co., Roy’s brother-in-law and one other friend; eight of us all together.

Wright & McGill Co. made each of us a special pair of Skeet Reese rods built to handle the crazy fighting of the peacock bass. There are two models, both of them seven footers, one heavy and one medium heavy. We’ll be tossing a bunch of big plugs and jigs. I guess the rains have got the river really full, so the topwater bite is not good, so the jerkbait bite is supposed to be the best right now.

I’ve got a bunch of Lucky Craft in my bag, and we’re looking forward to 11 days of fishing in the Amazon. It’s a bunch of good guys, and we’re looking forward to it.

I won’t be back in time for next week’s edition of Skeet’s Beat, but when I get back, I’ll be sure to share as much as I can, and I might even have some pictures. Until then – Tchau.

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