Monday January, 20th

Today was the earliest I had to get up on this trip. 5:30 A.M. It was for a very awesome reason. Dad and I were going ocean fishing. Our friends brother-in-law has a big ocean boat and he was going to take us if it worked out. Thank goodness it did. We had to drive to the marina where his boat was docked. After about 15 minutes of waiting, Ken and his friends, Charlie and Joel, showed up. At about 7 o'clock we finally left the dock. We had to go get the bait next to the bridge that they set traps for. It took about 40 to 45 minutes to go 25 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. Ken has a super nice boat, so even a bigger bonus. Dad caught the first fish but not what we were looking for. We wanted Red Grouper. I also caught something after him that wasn't  what we're looking for. Finally the switch turned on, we started to catch the right fish. Man they were fighters! It was hard to get them 80 feet up to the boat. Over the course of the day I caught 13 ocean creatures. Two weird fish. A stingray! Five keepers. And I had to throw five back because they had to be 20 inches long. Joel caught a huge Gag Grouper, but you can only keep them in July. At lunchtime we had sandwiches that Charlie had brought all the supplies for. Just to tell you we were definitely not going to starve. In the morning, the Grouper were eating pinfish, and before we left they switched to squid. The limit for grouper was four a peice and there were five of us, so we had a limit of 20. I got number 19. After we had caught our limit I kept fishing to see who could get a bigger one. I got one but it wasn't big enough. Ken told me to stop because we had to get back before we ran out of daylight. It was an awesome outing. After we got back to the dock, Dad and Charlie went to clean the fish for us. We said our thank yous and goodbyes and headed back to the camper. I couldn't stop talking about it to Mom and Audree. It was an awesome day!

                                                                                        -Garrett%