Away for a year and everything changes

Plans work perfectly until they meet reality.
Belle and I headed down to the coast to do some fishing for the first time in well over a year.

Let's just say that pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did.
I'll try the abridged version.
* Full Moon Friday night - more on this later
* Favorite restaurant out of bidness.
* Backup restaurant lost liquor license.
* Cut from Caney Creek to Intercoastal:    Cut is now silted to 12" deep. Stuck the boat, slowly thankfully. Boat in front of us and boat in back of us stuck as well. (I am amongst good company)
* Deploy standard BAR boat unsticking protocol.
* Air was dead still, surf was still too high to get out in the gulf and fish the sandbars. damnit.
* Seaweed moving on the incoming tide was immense in the channels nearby.  Got a Bite! No. Wait. just a ten pound clump of seaweed.
* Tidal current shifted the boat while anchored onto a mud shelf, boat stuck again.
* Deploy standard BAR boat unsticking protocol.
*  Back to the intercoastal to head 6 or 7 miles west wherein we snagged a sizable sheet of plastic floating subsurface on the lower unit that plowed copious amounts of water OVER the stern. Brain says, " I don't remember the boat doing this...something must be wrong.
*  Clear Plastic.  Decide to call it a day.
* Change mind on the way back and decide to hit the bay through the really narrow and shallow cut.
* Stick Boat.
* Deploy standard BAR boat unsticking protocol.
* Ease across bay, fish bird island...nothing.
* Head to the south shore of the barrier island separating the bay from the gulf. Nothing.
* Really decide to call it a day.
* Stick the boat on the way back through the really narrow and shallow cut to the canal.
* Deploy standard BAR boat unsticking protocol.
*  Barge traffic now looks like rush hour interspersed with shrimpers too lazy to hit the deep parts of the bay pulling nets in the intercoastal.  WEEEEEE!
*  I think I've figured out where the deeper part of the cut from the intercoastal to Caney Creek is on the way back.
* Stick boat for a good half hour.
* Deploy Nonstandard BAR boat unsticking protocol.  Belle is likely to post on this later as well. You could never ask for a better deck hand.
*  Belle brought some truly awesome steaks which pretty much made all the bad day go away.
* The two things that did go right is I did not trash the lower unit on the boat while sticking it and the engine did not crap out on us. (been there, done that, got the sunburn scars to prove it, once 30 miles out in the Pacific...not my boat.)



* Full moon. When the moon is full, the fish feed at night and lay up fat and happy during the day.
We know this, but we had not been down to fish in over a year and we were going FISHING DAMNIT.

I think I've missed two other boat stickings and omited some other miscellaneous shit that went wrong, but that's enough for one post.

Can't wait to get back down there again!