Cast your net: It’s shrimpin’ season!

On Friday afternoon, Elliott, my son; Brody, the amazing fish-finding and stock-trading dog; and I went for a quick fishing trip before dinner.

 

We fished adjacent to a shallow mudflat. There was a school of redfish chasing shrimp.

 

Fishing was easy.

 

Cast your lure to jumping shrimp and hook a redfish. Elliott observed that many of the shrimp were good eating sizes.

 

Over dinner, Elliott, Maddie, my daughter; Brody, and I decided to go deep-hole shrimping early Saturday morning. Our plan was to leave the dock at 5:30 in the morning and catch enough shrimp for a shrimp boil that afternoon. With low tide just before sunrise, we felt pretty good about our chances.

 

Since my heart attack last year, Elliott insists on casting and pulling up our deep-hole cast net. I am relegated to driving the boat and using our electronics to locate shrimp on the bottom. Maddie and Brody calculate the sink rate and drift of the net. When everything goes according to plan, the net lands on the shrimp.

 

On Saturday morning, there was a strong northeasterly wind. This made positioning the boat and calculating the sink and drift of the net a bit of a problem. We caught a few shrimp with each cast but could not land the cast net in the right spot.

 

Thankfully, Brody had a slide ruler and was able to calculate the complex geometry. On the next cast, the net landed on the biomass 35 feet below the boat. When Elliott pulled up the net, it was loaded with large shrimp. We were having a family shrimp boil!

 

On the ride back to the dock, Maddie and Brody made a grocery list. They went to Publix while Elliott and I cleaned the boat and headed the shrimp. That afternoon, we enjoyed a shrimp feast on the dock.

 

For the next few weeks, fishing and shrimping will be really good. Don’t miss it. Gather your family and go. Brody will even lend you his slide ruler.