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Date: Pink Grinder
Title: Jan 24, 2005
Date: 24 Jan 2005
Time: 16:48:34 -0500
“Pink Holy Roller” The First Baptist Church of Steinhatchee is having a three day revival February 6-9. Yes, this is a fishing report. The first sentence isn’t, necessarily, a revival announcement, though all are welcome to come, but a lead into the story. You see, First Baptist is the church my wife Gina and I attend and they’re having a fish fry the evening of the seventh. I came in the picture when my beloved volunteered me (not that I’d mind anyway) to take ‘boy’s’ of all ages fishing for the fry. Saturday morning, after a group breakfast and devotion, the gang of us climbed aboard my 32 foot catamaran for a capacity test. There were six men and seven young men for a total of thirteen kids ready for a meat hunt. A motionless fog blanket was draped over the river cutting visibility down to 75’ or less making it navigation by numbers off the GPS. “There’s a marker, captain” said the guys bird-dogging for me from the bow as we crawled out the channel, one marker at a time. Once past marker one, I decided not to go pick up the bait traps because they were amongst countless stone crab buoys. I figured by moving that slow and not being able to see well, we’d have a real good chance of wrapping a buoy line around one of the props. So I erred on the side of caution. Ironically, a few miles southwest of marker one the sky was clear as a bell. We jabbered and joked for forty five minutes cruising to the first hard bottom spot. There twelve hooks dropped down. The poles were rigged with an equal mix of grouper and grunt/sea bass tackle. A few pink mouth grunts came abroad; far less than I expected but it was just the first stop. We bopped out a little further to see if some grouper might join us. The few holes I anchored on produced some grunt, trigger fish and few short grouper. It was apparent that those ‘honey holes’ of mine had been tapped by other bee keepers in my three month absence. About that time, the leading edge of a cold front passed over rinsing us briefly with a shower. Team work made popping up and rolling down the custom canvas works quick to get us out of the weather. The wind picked up a bit making the 2-3 foot rollers we were fishing in turn more to a hard three foot Gulf chop. I brought the boat east about eight miles just in case things got nasty we wouldn’t have to endure a long boat ride. In the fifty foot zone, we made several stops just to manage a few black sea bass and a scattering of grunts here and there. The fish box was slowly filling. We might have enough to feed the congregation. “This is the last spot” I announced, hoping to put an extra bucket of grunts and sea bass in the box. It worked. The little ‘Steinhatchee snappers’ lit off sparking an early revival in the First Baptist Church of the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone was bringing fish in. Thankful the guys were taking the fish off and baiting their own hooks, I got to watch everybody in action. The spirit moved from one fellow to the next in random order. Brother Nate ‘Electramate’ Von Stein went plain John Henry Pentecostal, speed rapturing grunts up so fast a few of the fish were scaled in route to the bright light above. When caught up, Nate performed a dance that I can best describe as a rapid series of forward and back bends combined with spastic wrist rolls that I knick-named the “Pink Holy Roller”. I guess, it’s OK for Baptist to dance as long as their feet don’t move much. Well, in a fast hour we had more than enough for the fish fry and we returned. At the dock, a group of ladies were waiting for us guys. I thought how great it was for these gals to volunteer to clean the fish we brought back. I was wrong. It was quickly brought to my attention that in the book of 1st Gina, chapter 3, verses 8-10 I’ll paraphrase as something like “And the men shall bear the burden of cleaning their own fishes. All men gladly doing, always without fail. For unto them again will be granted approval of their wives that they might fish again.” After that enlightenment, it was wonderful having the guys pitch in to clean the boat and fish. Many hands do make less work. We split the fillets out evenly amongst ourselves save for two fish. The men are to bring those two fish and the women are to bring five loaves to Preacher Leon for the fry. It’s an old trick. We believe he can pull it off. Come see it for yourself on February 7th at 6:00 pm. Capt Brian Smith www.bigbendcharters.com