Beach Part 2 with a Little Fishin'

Beach day 3 was the worst weather of the week.  

It was super cloudy and would sprinkle off and on.  

Mom and I did get this dude out of the condo for an early morning walk. 

And we found this guy while out.

We spent the day either playing baseball on the grassy area, kids swimming indoor/outdoor, and the adults covered with beach towels to keep from shivering.  It really wasn't that bad because the kids were still able to play outside all day.  A cloudy day at the beach is still a good day.

We did go to dinner that night.  I took several pictures and then noticed Brody's face.  There were at least five just like this....

That's better.

Mom and Dad.

This is when we discussed maybe it was time for a kid-free date night.  Ha.

Dinner at Bubbas.

Day 4 turned out to be a beautiful day!
We had John's birthday fishing trip scheduled that afternoon.  We did an offshore trolling trip for 4 hours.  We had never chartered anything in Orange Beach and really, just picked from online reviews.  As you can see in the millions of pictures I took, we had a great time.  So much fun. Next year we are hoping to go back and do the deep sea trip since this was so awesome.


It was just John, my Dad, Mason, and myself.  Brody stayed back to swim with everyone else, but I think he is going to have to come next year.  He keeps saying "next time I'm coming!"  And I think he will do just fine!

The boat.

Pointing to those teeth again.

It was just us, the boat captain, and the deck hand.  They were so nice.  The deck hand would cast out all the lines and set them up.  He was always able to tell if a fish was hooked (I have no idea how he knew at times), and get into action.  He would pull it out and then hand it to one of us to reel it in.

John was first up.  Mason and I were a bit intimidated at the start.

He caught a bonita fish.

Mason didn't really want to touch it, but he finally got the courage.  In his defense, these fish are bloody!  We had it on our clothes.  Yuck.

Dad caught one and almost fell reeling it in.  (In his defense, he is left handed and the poles are for right handed people.)  We thought this fish was gonna be huge.

You can't see the fish but it was tiny.  You can see how hard Pops was laughing.

 We let him catch the next one, and he got a good one!

Mason's turn.

He caught a Spanish Mackerel.   He was the only one who caught an edible fish!

But once he got going, he wanted every single fish.

Weren't far off the shoreline.
The trip before us was a deep sea trip.  After the hour boat ride to get out there, they were all so sick that they had to come right back.  The waters were so rough out there.  We were glad we stayed close!

 I caught a couple of fish but no-one took any pictures.  Finally, I asked John to snap a picture of me holding my fish.  =)  (we do think mine was the biggest!  ha)

We would follow the birds to find the fish.  Pretty cool.

Mason decided to snap a few pictures himself. 

This is the captain.

Brody was having lots of fun back at the pool.
He had bubbles and snocones.

John's catch. 

Love this picture.

That is seriously just a ton of pictures of people fishing.
But I want to remember that day for sure!  It was a TON of fun.  We didn't end up keeping any of the fish for ourselves which was fine.  The captain kept it to use as bait for marlins.  Maybe next year we can go out deeper and catch snapper.

We ate in that night and then headed out for some crab hunting and night swimming.

We found the biggest crab.  When it crawled out of my bucket (yes, crawled out), I even screamed.  

Cousin time night swimming.