Kitty Hawk #3

Wednesday we got up, and hung around a while. I took advantage of the time to put a good hurting on a Tom Clancy novel I was reading. After everyone had breakfast, we paid a visit to the Wright Bros. Memorial. We had a nice visit there, and then decided to take a ride south to see the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. Turned out to be a little farther than we had planned (about 120 miles round trip), but it was a beautiful day, and the scenery was great. We were amazed at how everything here had developed. There were huge cottages everywhere you looked. What used to be barren sand dunes is now cottage development. We visited the lighthouse but decided to forego the climb to the top, which costs $7.00 and involves stairs numbering in the hundreds. After returning to the condo, we spent a little time at the pool, and grilled some hot dogs. My dad and I had already decided we would go fishing again on Thursday.

Thursday morning, we got up early and hit the pier again. The "blues" were running, and the pier looked like a fish factory. However, we sort of brought a knife to a gunfight. Everyone was fishing on the windward side of the pier, and they were pulling in "blues" as fast as they could throw the lines. We were excited, and baited our hooks for the blues catching. Well we couldn’t buy a bite. Turned out everyone else was using something called a "Gotch Ya" lure. This particular lure must have been like cocaine to fish, cause they were pulling them in like there would never be fish again. We spent several hours trying to catch a fish. Oh and during this time the game warden came by looking in coolers making sure no one exceeded the 10 bluefish per person rule. He looked in our cooler and all we had was some very smelly squid. (I think he laughed, but he disguised it as a cough.) I finally caught one fish, but it was a retarded fish and looked like it had been caught several times b efore. I caught it on a Bass rig that looked like a minnow. I figured he didn’t know his minnows from his "Got Ya(s)". As lunchtime approached, I made the decision that we had to find some "Gotch Ya(s)". We loaded everything in the Tahoe and headed down the road for the bait store. We found the very same "Gotch Yas" at the bait store for $1.99. Two of them joined our fishing armada. After lunch we returned to the fishing pier to try our luck with the newly purchased "Gotch Ya(s)". As it turned out the blue fish had decided to vacate the premises while we were gone. I did manage to catch three using my new found lure technology but Dad caught none. While trying to catch the blue fish, Dad managed to throw half his pole overboard due to the pole joint not being fastened tight enough. However, we were able to retrieve the errant hunk of fiberglass and get him back to full fishing strength. We spent the remainder of the afternoon till about 3pm casting our "Gotch Ya(s)" into a 35-mph w ind. (the fish of course were never on the leeward side—how they know that under water I’ll never know) Finally the wind got too annoying to bear. Having nailed our limit of three fish (which we gave away) I decided that we would call it a day. We returned home, packed everything away, and headed out for a seafood dinner because of our inability to catch anything edible. Once again it was the old Master Card commercial. Who could have known the impact on Americana some advertising weenie could have. Fishing lures $1.99 each etc. etc. etc., fishing with your 86 year old father (and 50 year old tackle box) priceless.

Happy day,

Wes

Kitty Hawk #2

Today is Thursday, and it has been and interesting couple days. Tuesday morning, I picked up my dad to go fishing on the Avalon Pier. We loaded the stuff in the Tahoe, and off we went. We checked in at the pier, and paid our fee ($10.00 for 24 hrs) to an old Jewish guy that looked like he came with the pier. The pier itself was a trip back in time. The entrance building was crammed with a mixture of old fortune telling and strength testing machines, right beside the latest video console stuff. On the entrance was a sign "If you didn’t buy it here you can’t drink it here" but to my observation, it wasn’t exactly enforced. Murray (that’s what I decided to call him) stamped our hands with a red Tuesday, we bought a nice box of frozen calamari (or squid as fishermen call it), and headed out onto the pier. We decided to "rig up" our poles at the table shortly down the pier, to stay out of everyone else’s way. My dad opened a tackle box, that probably rode in our 56 Chevy, and we put on the customary pier bottom fishing rigs. It was at this time the fun started. Somewhere between his car and the pier, the tip grommet had fallen off dad’s pole. Well this wasn’t a tragedy, it still seemed like it would work. So we found a spot, baited up our hooks and "started fishing". It was at this point, I discovered the brand new pole and reel I had brought were totally unsuited to the task at hand. I couldn’t cast it six inches without the line turning into this horrible bird’s nest on the reel. Meanwhile, folks all around us are pulling in little Croakers two at a time. Oh yea, and dad’s pole with the missing grommet, wouldn’t reel up correctly. This is when the old Master Card commercial came into my head. "Pier fishing $10.00, squid $4.50, fishing with dad on the pier, priceless. For everything else there’s MasterCard". (or in my case American Express) I said the heck with this, and we made a 30-minute round trip to Kitty Hawk’s finest Wally Mart for some new poles. Trus t old Sam to think of the fishermen at the Beach. There was a fine assortment of complete fishing outfits for under $20.00. We picked out matching Shakespeare Tiger poles (one red and one black), and headed back to the pier. Things went smoothly from there, with the exception of the fish quit biting and now all we could catch were Skates (small stingrays). I caught eight and dad caught two. They are very heavy and difficult to get off the hook. Interspersed with those, we caught a couple little Croakers. However, something about sitting on the pier and watching the beach world go by grabbed me and didn’t let go. We had fun, and then left to come back later. In the evening, we came back and tried our luck. Again it was wonderful sitting on the pier fishing and watching the sun go down. We caught numerous little croakers, and finally called it a night about 11:30. Turns out, you can show up any time after 11:00 and get on the pier for free till 05:00 when Murray shows up and starts c ollecting the money again. More later.

Wes

Kitty Hawk

Tropical Storm Barry.....

Well here we are at Kitty Hawk NC at the beach. We had an uneventful trip down on Saturday, and it didn’t start raining till Saturday night. I drove my father’s car and Vickie drove the Tahoe with her mother. The place we are staying is quite nice, and other than heart attack stairs getting to the top floor (where the kitchen and living room are) we really like it. I thought my ticker was going to explode before we got all the stuff from the car up to the kitchen. (I brought quite a bit of food from home, to save going to the grocery store all the time. And anyone who knows me knows when I catch something un-perishable on a good sale, I stock up. So I raided my pantry to the tune of a couple big plastic tubs and my freezer for a cooler full.) As usual, something interesting happened on the trip down: I overheard a guy talking on a cell phone about "a storm coming up the coast" I didn’t think any more about it, until it started raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock Saturday ni ght. This place does not have gutters, and the rain was running off the roof like someone was hosing it down with a fire hose. I was busy hoping it was raining at home. I never turned on the news and then Sunday, it was still raining hard, and the surf was pretty severe. I thought to myself, what a storm. Then today, Lorayne, Vickie’s mother told me the whole thing had been a named tropical storm. Shows you what I know. I just thought it was raining quite a bit. Today she showed me where The Weather Channel was on the TV, and we watched the talking heads yammer about the "major storm". I must admit yesterday morning when it was raining so hard we couldn’t see out the windows, I started looking for Jim Cantorini out in the yard doing a live report. But leave it to Wes to be on a barrier island in a tropical storm and not even know it.

Today (Monday) weather is beautiful. It stopped raining about 5:15 am. This afternoon it is hot and all the puddles are gone. Yesterday during a lull in the storm, (sun actually came out) we walked down to the beach and stuck our ankles in the water. It was really cold (like 67 ° ). This morning, we went down to the cottage where my Mom and Dad are staying with some of my kin on my mother’s side. I got to see and meet some of my various cousins (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th) their spouses etc. It was quite interesting, and I found we had quite a few things in common. Miss Vickie, as usual, acted like she had known them all her life. This afternoon, we spent some time putting new line on an ocean type-fishing pole I’ve never used. Tomorrow I’m going fishing on the Avalon Pier with my Dad, ought to be a new adventure. Last time I can remember doing it (fishing on a pier with Dad) would be about 1958 here in Kitty H awk. First time I can remember them bringing us to Kitty Hawk was when we lived in Pittsburgh, and we came down in Dad’s 54 Chevy and it took two days. Rest of the afternoon I think will be spent by the pool with some adult beverages. More later.

Wes