We've caught the shrimping fever at our house this season! Last year Anthony and his parents bought new nets and new lights to prepare for this year. Anthony has been watching the tides and the shrimping reports and it finally looked like a good night to go. They left the house around 5pm so that they could get a good parking spot at the boat ramp. Once the sun set and the tide started going out, the shrimp started coming!
Anthony has a net that stays on the back of the boat to catch shrimp while everyone else is on the front of the boat catching shrimp with their own nets. When he pulled it up to check on it, they were all shocked to see just how much shrimp were in there!
They got home around 11pm and at first they tricked me and acting all disappointed like they hadn't caught anything. Then they opened up the cooler! There were so many shrimp! They caught the limit, which is 5 gallons per boat.
Since the shrimp are only running a few months out the year and the tides were still good, we decided to go out again the next night. This time I got to go and see what all of the fuss was about.
Here is Anthony, getting the lights ready before the sun goes down.
The sunset was beautiful to watch while we were waiting. Everyone gets their boat into position and gets set up and then you just sit and wait and watch for the shrimp to start swimming by.
It was hard work scooping the shrimp through the water with the long poles for hours, but it was so much fun, you just didn't want to stop. If you did stop to rest a little bit, you would see all these big shrimp go by and think, "Man! I could have gotten that one!" In a few hours we got our limit of 5 gallons and we headed home by around 10:30pm.
I was completely exhausted, but we had a lot of fun catching our seafood for the next few months at least. Our freezer is so full that we aren't sure what we are going to do with any more that we catch this season. Anthony has sold some of it to some coworkers, but I think we are going to break down and buy a freezer for the garage so we can have a place to put all of it!
The morning after wearing myself out on the boat, I drove to Ocala to meet my mom, have lunch, and visit Silver Springs. Rett was not a happy camper on the car ride, but they were both really excited to run around at the park. James was also excited about going on a glass bottom boat ride!
While we were waiting for the boat ride to start, I took a picture of all of us. I love these crazy boys!
The water was really clear and it was so cool to hear all about the different springs, how deep they are, and how long they have been there. James liked to see the fish, but his favorite were the turtles. If a turtle swam by, all the kids would yell, "TURTLE!" and get really excited.
The boat captain pointed out this tree on the tour. It is a palm tree that has grown out, down, and then up again making a large "U" shape. It is called horseshoe tree and the tradition is that if you get your picture taken inside the U, then you will have good luck. So we did!
It is pretty easy to feel lucky with these awesome boys of mine. I love going on adventures with them!
1 comment:
That's so crazy about all of the shrimp!!! I have been waiting for you to do a blog post on that since you and my dad started posting the pictures on Facebook. I have a really yummy shrimp curry recipe I'll send you if you'd like it- it's our favorite dish I make. Silver Springs looked fun! I've only been there once when I was a nanny and the mom of the family took me with them to help out. Actually, we were going to go to the water park across the street but it was closed that day so we went to Silver Springs instead. Pretty sure she regretted bringing me, paying my way, then paying me for the day after that! Anyways, those boys of yours are so ridiculously beautiful, I want to spend time with them so badly!!!
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