We’re going back to Florida. Our trip in February wasn’t really planned. The Astros won the World Series, Kris bought spring training tickets because she wanted to go, and we threw in a half day fishing.  It was pretty spur of the moment.

This isn’t spur of the moment. Most summers we take a baseball trip  somewhere, somewhere we otherwise wouldn’t go.  Last summer it was Baltimore. The summer before was Kansas City.  This summer it’s Tampa/St. Pete. Friends tell me that Tampa has great cigar stores and the only true Cuban sandwich, but even with those accomplishments without baseball it’s unlikely I’d go there. it’s not an obvious place for a random trip from Houston. But late June is apparently the heart of the Tampa tarpon season, the Astros are playing the Rays, and I really want to catch a tarpon.

Kris has caught a tarpon, and I have a great photo of that holy shit moment where she realizes that she’s hooked something different.  And that tarpon was small. I, on the other hand, ain’t.  I’ve had them follow my fly but that’s it. I ain’t.

Ted Williams caught more than 1000 tarpon. I want one. Just one.

C’mon St. Ted. You didn’t get me a hit in little league. You owe me.

*  *  *

Meantimes Saturday we drove to Elmendorf, Texas, 196 miles from Houston, to pick up our boat. We’d had some work done, and most important New Water had added a casting platform on the bow.  That’s how us nautical types talk.  On the bow.

We then trailered the boat 246 miles back to Galveston, where the hardest part of the day, getting the boat down the ramp and off the trailer, was waiting for us.  Success! We docked the boat, parked the trailer,  and drove the 50 miles back to Houston. That’s nearly 500 miles in the day, plus unloading the boat, plus that whole thing in the McDonald’s parking lot. I got back to Houston and went to bed.

Sunday we took the boat out for the first time since its return, and after more than a year one of us finally caught a redfish off our boat.  It was a dinky, tiny redfish but there you are. It was a redfish. It even had room for multiple spots.

Kris also caught a flounder.  If she’d only caught a Speck we’d have had a slam.