Shark Fishing on Hilton Head Island
I chartered the USS Cajun and Captain Fred Mix of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina to take my family and I on a once in a lifetime Shark fishing adventure. The first day we went out w/ him to survey the area and look for dolphins in the channels running through the island and managed to see a few on this trip but the real fun didn’t start until day two.
When we pulled up to his private dock on one of the many channels that run throughout the island I stood on his dock and talked to him as he got the boat loaded up. While we were standing there a large dolphin rolled up on it’s side not very far from me at all. I must have looked like a hillbilly as I started pointing at it and freaking out, he just laughed at me. As I was looking at Fred’s dock and admiring the entire setup I couldn’t help but notice that the whole thing was solar powered. His boat lift, the lights, and even his automatic feeder were all solar powered. His entire dock was what you might call a “green dock”. I was very impressed.
Finally my mother and father in law joined Donna and I on the dock and we boarded the USS Cajun for the trip. The boat ride was incredibly smooth, we had already pumped my mother in law up with Dramamine prior to leaving so turbulence was a concern in the back of my mind but it proved not to be an issue at all. We headed downstream a couple of miles from his dock and discussed what we were wanting to catch that day, which of course for me, was shark.
Captain Fred pulled us into a shallow alcove off from the main channel and handed my mother in law the wheel of the boat and told her to keep it steady. We all kind of sat there in amazement as he pulled out his net and began casting it for small baitfish called Mullets (see Wikipedia description here). In the first cast of the net we pulled in about a dozen or so small baitfish, 5 small shrimp, and 1 squid. While we looked on with amazement at the tiny squid Captain Fred reached down and picked it up and swallowed it whole. It was incredible. We ended up casting our nets 3 or 4 times until we finally netted the size and quantity of baitfish we needed for the day, we even netted one small juvenile shark that we quickly got out of the boat…
As we trolled down the main channel on our way to a destination that Fred had never fished before he kept us entertained with stories of some of the celebrities he had encountered on the island in the past including the late Dale Earnhardt, Oprah Winfrey, and John Cougar Mellencamp. Fred first started frequenting the island in the 1960’s and had became a regular by the 70’s and it wasn’t hard to tell that he never regretted moving there full time. We could simply point at a large yacht or a seaside mansion and he could give us the entire story surrounding it. He was like an encyclopedia of knowledge when it came to Hilton Head Island. As we continued onto our destination we also spotted several large dolphins who would come up for air. It was so cool to see them up close and personal. Spotting a dolphin was one of the things my wife had wanted to do all week so I knew that even if we didn’t catch a single fish she would be content, of course I wouldn’t be unless I got to wrestle a shark.
Once we made our way to our destination, which was a large pocket about the size of my neighborhood back here in Conway, we dropped our anchor. I glanced over at the depth finder and noticed that it was registering about 40-50ft in depth where we were sitting. I looked all over the screen and didn’t see a single fish anywhere but I trusted Fred’s judgment in picking the spot. Fred carefully baited our lines w/ the large mullets that we had netted and tossed them over the side of the boat.
Fred then gave us a quick once over about handling the large bait-casting rods we were using and before he could even get finished I heard the drag on my pole start singing. I think it even shocked Fred a bit too. I quickly jumped into place, without even putting on my safety belt that the pole clips into and went to work setting my hook and reeling in this monster.
I have to admit, the fight was a little more than I expected and it took me longer to land the fish than I had expected too. I finally got the fish to the side of the boat and it rolled up on its back to splash us real good and we immediately realized that this was a shark. I bet you could have heard everyone in the boat go, “Shark!” from a mile a way. As I got the fish close to the side of the boat Fred reached down and grabbed the line to pull it near the boat and see how well the fish was hooked. Since I had been fighting the fish it had worn itself down a little bit but was still nothing to play with. Since the fish was so large there wasn’t any way that we were going to be able to pull it into the boat so Fred pulled it up onto the side as best as he could and reached down with his pliers to try to remove our hook. The next thing I know Fred raises up and the pliers that he was initially holding were gone. We sat there with a “what do we do now” look on our faces as Fred pulled out another tool and cut the line to release the shark.
No sooner than Fred got another hook tied on my line my Father in Laws poll doubled over and the drag started singing. He ran over and grabbed the poll and set his hook and started reeling in our second shark of the day. The two shark hit so close together it was almost like having a double right off the bat. The rest of the day would pretty much go this way…
My wife Donna decided she wanted to catch a shark so she sat down in the chair and we got her fastened in to reel in the next one we hooked. She struggled and struggled at first but finally pulled in her first catch of the day. Next up we told my Mother in law that she was going to reel in the next one, so she got situated in one of the seats and we got her setup to reel in the next one. It was hilarious to listen to her as she pulled in the shark. I think the fight pretty much wore her out but Donna was ready to go again.
We fished on for about 2 hours and enjoyed the scenery, catching all sharks up until my Father in law hooked something that felt like he was pulling up a Volkswagen. He fought and fought to get this large fish to the surface and finally he was able to roll the fish up on it’s side so we could see what it was. He had caught a stingray. We were freaking out at this point and all I could think about was that Animal Planet guy that got gored by one of these things.
Finally Fred helped him get the fish up to the side of the boat and pulled it onto the side so we could get a closer look at it. The tail of the fish was whipping through the air toward us but we were a safe enough distance away that we weren’t in any danger, and then out of nowhere Fred reaches down with his gloves on and grabs the tail of the fish and holds it up so we could see it. He explained how the stinger works and how they use it to protect themselves in the wild. It was an incredible lesson in marine biology.
No sooner than my father in law had released his stingray back in the other poll started zinging again. Having just wrestled our largest shark of the day out of the water my arms felt like jelly so I told Donna she was going to have to take this one, she jumped into the seat and got secured in to reel in the catch. It didn’t take us long to realize that she had something large on her line as well, and since it wasn’t fighting like the sharks had been doing we had a pretty good idea that it was a stingray too. She reeled and reeled and finally rolled the fish up on the surface and sure enough it was a stingray! She wrestled and wrestled to get the fish up to the side of the boat and finally Fred was able to cut the line and release the fish. We had to cut the line because it had swallowed her hook completely and none of us wanted to reach down and grab it.
We fished on a little longer and finally Donna hooked another fish, this one was running like greased lightning through the water and I noticed that it was even pulling her up from her seat so I got a little concerned. Finally she yelled out, “I can’t hold it” so I jumped over and grabbed the poll from her and began fighting this massive fish. It was all that I had in me to get it to the surface of the water so we could identify it, Fred said it looked like a black tip shark. I continued to fight the fish until finally I got it landed and released. I was exhausted, we all were at this point so we headed back in and called it a day.
All in all we hooked several sharks, I honestly lost count. We landed 5 larger sharks total, and 2 stingrays. This was the fishing experience of a lifetime and I think it’s safe to say it was the highlight of our vacation this year, we talked about it the entire 13hr trip home… For more photos from our fishing adventure, click here…
Lastly, I promised Captain Fred that I would give him a shout out on my blog when I got home so here goes… If you are going to be anywhere in the Hilton Head Island area and would like to do some serious Shark fishing, you should call Captain Fred Mix and charter him and his boat, the USS Cajun. He can be reached directly at: 843-683-3474. Fred also sells yachts, you can visit his yacht website here…
Also, being the nerd that I am, I did something pretty cool while on the boat. I tagged the location where we released our catch on Gowalla. You can locate this spot here. Do me a favor though, if you do decide to head out w/ Captain Fred, please check in on Gowalla at my spot and post a message as to how many fish you caught that day…
Thoughts on BP Disaster
I have tweeted several short rants about the BP oil spill this past week but have tried to stay somewhat silent on the issue until I learned a little bit more. I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, but seeing what’s happening to the beaches in Louisiana has me pretty ticked off. The problem is that we really aren’t learning a lot about what’s going on. BP is feeding us what they want us to see and with each failed attempt to plug the leak the nation is losing confidence in their ability.
I have not been a big proponent of government regulation in the past but w/ all of the things that have came to light regarding the good ole boy system that has been in place in Washington for years I think it might be time for stricter oversight when it comes to things that could have tremendous environmental impact like offshore drilling. I get the impression that a lot of thought of what could happen in this scenario wasn’t given until it actually happened.
The sad and helpless thing of this whole thing is that no one really knows what they can do to help. There have been several campaigns to boycott BP gas stations but honestly that won’t do a lot of good because BP doesn’t actually own their gas stations, they are owned by franchisees, just ordinary people like you and I that are as far removed from this situation as we are. Another frustration that we are feeling, especially the people in Louisiana, is that not a lot is being done to start cleaning up the mess before it hits our ecosystems and beaches. You can’t tell me that a country as advanced as the US can’t multi-task and get the cleanup efforts started. In Louisiana they don’t even know who is in charge of the cleanup operation, and there is a lot of finger pointing. I sure hope that the right people can get their game plans together soon and remedy this situation. It’s just plain sad.
Pleth to Sponsor Wordcamp #wcfay
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My partners and I are pleased to announce that Pleth will be sponsoring this years Wordcamp Fayetteville on May 29-30, 2010 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. This will be the first ever Wordcamp in Arkansas.
From the minute I heard about the conference I knew that I wanted our company to be involved with it in some way. The Wordpress open source CMS accounts for a large percentage of our clients projects these days and with the advances expected in version 3.0 I can only see it’s deployment within our organization growing.
A week ago I had one of the planners from Wordcamp Fayetteville, Christopher Spencer, on The Cotton Club Podcast to discuss the upcoming event and to give us a rundown as to what we can expect to see at this inaugural event. In case you missed it, here’s a link to the show…
Below is a press release about Wordcamp Fayetteville that was released earlier this year:
Also, if you are on the fence about attending Wordcamp Fayetteville, here’s some incentive, there are only 5 spots remaining, better jump on Eventbrite and register now!!!
My Sunday Evening Rant
I was in my office this morning working on a project and before watching our church live stream I turned on some of the Sunday morning political pundits to see what they were talking about. I heard one of the hosts say that The Huffington Post was celebrating it’s 5th year online this weekend. They also went on to say that The Huffington Post was neck in neck w/ The New York Times in terms of traffic to their website. This got me to thinking. Arianna started 5 years ago, and The New York Times was founded when? Oh, 1851… hmm…
I am not a follower of The Huffington Post, I’m not a big fan of news outlets that lean too far in either direction when it comes to their political reporting. I like to think of myself as an intelligent person, just tell me what’s going on and I will form my own opinion. It’s for that very reason that I don’t watch Fox News. I don’t need Glen Beck to give me reasons as to why I should be mad about things, because honestly I figure myself to be a little sharper than his average viewer. I don’t mean that in a bad way, that’s just how it is.
Now, I do think Glen Beck has it going on, as long as people are buying into his show, he is going to continue to make a bundle from it. Isn’t that what it’s all about at the end of the day? You pay me what they pay him and I will go on television and convince people they can fly. haha. But, by getting on the level that Fox does w/ a lot of their programming, haven’t they left themselves wide open to have their market share consumed by other angry and opinionated bloggers like Arianna? It’s not just Fox either, it’s almost all of the news agencies today, print, television, radio, etc. Back in the day it didn’t used to be that way…
I bet the average person never really knew Walter Cronkite’s personal political leanings, he just did his job and reported the news. That’s why he was the most trusted man in America at one time, he didn’t try to put a spin on it, didn’t have to, he’d never heard of a blogger. It was what it was w/ Cronkite. We landed on the moon. Kennedy is dead. The Nation Mourns. Of course later in life, when he wasn’t behind the CBS news desk he did do some freelance work for outlets like The Huffington Post and a few others, but he used this outlet to express his views and not from behind the news desk!
Now, fast forward 40 years… News outlets complain about losses in revenue, market share, etc., but by injecting their agendas into their product (the news) haven’t they left themselves wide open for this the entire time. I have to think they sort of did. I think it’s great that anyone w/ an opinion can fire up a blog and become a media rock star overnight. Sort of evens out the playing field a little bit. Now, again for the record, I don’t follow Arianna Huffington, nor do I agree w/ many of her ideas, but kudos to her as a blogger for what she has been able to do.
The bottom line I guess, if I was trapped in a corn maze w/ Arianna Huffington and Rupert Murdoch, and I had to work with one of them to find my way out of the maze, Rupert is SOL…
RSVP for #ToadsuckTweetup!
You can RSVP online for the Toadsuck Tweetup this Saturday at noon in the square! By doing so it will give us a good idea as to how many people we can expect to attend. Just select YES in the box below to RSVP. Thanks, and stay tuned for more news and information. I am looking forward to meeting everyone, this should be an awesome time.
Custom Gowalla Event Stamp!
A few days ago I reached out to Gowalla to see if they would be interested in helping us out with our first ever Toadsuck Tweetup by designing us a custom stamp for Toadsuck Daze. I got notification today from Sandi that they were in fact interested and that they were going to design the custom stamp for us. This stamp will be available for people to pick up by checking in on Gowalla during the weekend long event. Now, I haven’t seen the stamp yet, and I can only imagine that it’s going to have a frog on it since that is the direction that I pointed them in, kind of fitting don’t you think?
Why is this a big deal? Well, because aside from large, highly publicized events, there just aren’t that many of these custom stamps out there to pick up for Gowalla collectors and enthusiasts, and I am not for sure but this might be the first one in Central Arkansas for an event. The only way to get this stamp is to check in on Gowalla during the festival weekend, after that it’s gone forever unless of course you picked it up, in which case it’s yours forever! A great time to do this check in would be during the tweetup we have scheduled for 12 noon on Saturday during the festival. Stay tuned for more information on the Tweetup later, I just wanted to shout from the rooftops how cool Gowalla is for helping us out with this.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Toadsuck Daze, which is expected to see 150,000 people this year, here’s a little bit of information from the main website:
Toad Suck Daze is a free festival. A 3-day festival of food, family and fun held on the streets of downtown Conway, Arkansas. This ‘Laid Back Weekend’ occurs annually the first weekend in May and has something for the entire family: arts & crafts, ‘Toadal Kids Zone’, a carnival, local and national entertainment, food, rock wall, petting zoo, ‘Stuck on a Truck’, 5K/10K, golf tournament, a 3 on 3 basketball tournament, magicians, and so much more! Toad Suck Daze is also home to ‘The World Championship Toad Races’. The festival is run almost exclusively by volunteers from Conway and Faulkner County, including the local police and fire departments. It has free admission and proceeds go to support higher education in Faulkner County. Since the start of the festival over $1 million has been given in scholarship and towards scholarship endowments. This money has helped over 200 individuals attend local institutes of higher learning.
If you aren’t familiar with Gowalla, I suggest you check them out immediately if you work in the web industry! You can find their awesome app in the app store as well as linked from their corporate website: http://www.gowalla.com. Stay tuned for more info on this stamp as I get it…
Taking Notes w/ Evernote
The other day my wife and I set out to clean and organize my office closet, it hadn’t been organized in several months and I am not the type of person that can be very productive if things aren’t organized in a certain way, this is most likely the result of me being diagnosed with mild OCD in my early twenties. My office closet serves as the “catch-all” in my business world because i can shut the doors and everything, no matter how crookedly it’s stacked, is out of sight and out of mind. While cleaning out the closet we went through and tossed tons and tons of old notebooks w/ notes from everything from client meetings to church sermons. It’s safe to say that I am a note taker…
One of the first apps that I downloaded after getting an iPhone was Evernote. At first I didn’t really use it that much w/ the exception of a few specific times where I found myself w/out a notebook in hand but over time I have found myself using it more and more for things in my day to day life. The really cool thing about Evernote is that it’s a synchronized application between my iPhone and my desktop (both Windows and Mac).
All of my notes are tagged and stored in notebooks that are extremely easy to locate via the web, desktop app, or on my iPhone. For me being able to retrieve informational notes quickly and easily is top priority, and user interface is a close second. Evernote answers both of these in a big way. Not only is the Evernote interface easy to navigate but having tagged content, it’s only a few seconds to locate. I have about 10 notebooks presently, each w/ various pages of notes, clippings, and scans related to various things I am involved in. Most recently I even started using Evernote to store client project notes, I can open up my iPhone and record notes or take notes on my desktop during conference calls.
Some other really cool features w/ Evernote are that you can post notes via Twitter by following @MyEN and probably the most cool feature right now is the ability to post voice recordings. With the premium version of Evernote (which costs about $5 a month) you can add supersize uploads, advanced security, and my favorite, Collaboration, to your service. Let’s say that I have a note that I want to share w/ someone else and give them the ability to edit the note, it’s just a matter of upgrading to premium service. The entire Evernote experience is so UX driven that I am falling in love with it more and more everyday.
Upgrading to Windows 7
If you know me or have followed my blog for any length of time you probably are already aware of my Microsoft frustrations by now. I have been using Microsoft Windows operating systems since they have been around. My first operating system was DOS 6.22, the old command line, and I have moved with them through every version of their GUI operating systems from 3.11 through Vista with the exception of Win98 and Millennium Edition. In a nutshell I have watched as their operating systems have become more and more bloated for the sake of adding what they call innovation.
Recently I purchased a MacBook Pro and installed Parallels to start learning OSx. My plan has been to eventually transition from developing client projects on a Windows based machine to a Mac. Everyday that I use my Mac I can’t help but fall in love with it more and more. The machine that I am still using as my primary production machine is currently running Windows Vista. With that being said, I haven’t had a “whole lot” of problems w/ this machine but it also hasn’t been perfect. I typically go in and turn off a lot of the theme and indexing features in the operating system so that performance is enhanced but even with these features turned off the past 2 days w/ this machine have been a living hell (to put it nicely…).
I reached out to a friend who does remote repair to have him take a look at my machine and even he couldn’t find the culprit for it’s decreased performance. Grasping for straws I decided to head over to Best Buy tonight and pick up a copy of Windows 7 and see if an upgrade might cure the locking up and performance slow down that I have been experiencing. As of right now I am about 32% of the way through the upgrade and I am having my doubts despite hearing good reviews of Windows 7 from several people. My goal is get through the next quarter or two w/ this as my primary production machine before making the transition to a completely Mac environment. Everyone please say a prayer on my behalf that I am able to do this…
If anything should go wrong during this upgrade process, don’t worry, you guys, my loyal blog readers, will be the first ones to hear about it.
My Google Search Story
I ran across this on Robert Blake’s Tumblr page and thought it was pretty cool so I created one myself. This reminds me a lot of the television ad Google ran during the Super Bowl, it might be the exact same thing, I was too pissed about the Colts losing to remember much else.
Thoughts on Income Taxes…
For the past few weeks I have listened to people voice their opposition to the Health Care Reform plan that was recently passed by Congress. I don’t think that I have seen any piece of legislation garner such intense debate and outrage as this one. While watching CNN and listening to various panelists dispute the constitutionality or fairness of the bill I started wondering, are these people just now getting mad? Has everything been cool for them up to this one particular piece of legislation? The reason I ask is because for me I haven’t been happy up until this point, and furthermore, I think that our tax system is probably a lot more unfair than any healthcare legislation the Government can impose.
As a business owner, I have to pay self employment taxes. I also own Real Estate and have investments. I sat down last year and figured that close to 40% of my income went right back out of my hands due to income and property taxes, primarily income taxes. How can this be fair? As a business owner, I have employees and own commercial property, both of which we pay taxes on as well. It’s no great secret that my tax dollars have gone to fund things that I don’t agree with, and I won’t go into those things here. Shouldn’t our country reward those who provide jobs and stimulate the economy instead of taxing them to death? Let’s say I go out next year and double my income, I will almost pay in taxes the total amount of income I had this year. Does that seem fair?? I guess my question is this, why is it that everyone gets so ticked off on Health Care Reform Legislation and hasn’t said a thing about abolishing the tax system that we have had in place for years? Am I the only one frustrated by all of this?
In closing, I want to state for the record that I love my country and I do realize that taxes are necessary, my complaint is that they are excessive. I also believe that a person has a civic and biblical obligation to pay their taxes, I just don’t think that the current system is fair. Surely I can’t be the only one??
