Zia Rider Blog

When we motored up to Dolphin Dock Deep Sea Fishing in Port Aransas a couple of the workers came outside to greet us.  They recognized the sound of the bike and knew it had to be that motorcycle couple from New Mexico again lol.  Out of how many tourists they must see every day it’s neat that they would remember us.  I guess we did sit and talk with everyone for hours last year waiting to see if we could go out before they called it and we ended up going bay fishing later in the day.

This year the weather was better and at least the first day we got to go out for Cece’s first deep sea fishing adventure!

Bait almost looks too good to throw to the fishes, that looks like some real good sashimi right there!

First catch of the day was a 93 pound Wahoo!   This should’ve been my fish, the deck hand threw out a line as we were slowing down and hooked it then looked for me to hand me the pole to reel it in.   I had just stepped away to get a picture of Cece so they handed the pole to the next closest guy, darn it!     Oh well, the fish is a beauty! and a good omen for the day.

Cece’s first catch of the day, a very nice red snapper!   Too bad they were out of season for a few more weeks and it had to be thrown back.

We had a bit of excitement when we all had out lines in waiting for someone to get a bite when BOOM something hit my line and the reel started spinning out out so fast it was smoking. The reel stopped and the thick deep sea pole about doubled over in half, it was all I could do to hang onto it and POP! the line snapped!  We have no idea what the hell it was only that it was huge!  After that my reel was seized it wouldn’t crank in or let out anymore, whatever it was had broken my pole!

New fishing pole.  By now people were catching good sized dog snapper all around the boat but I put my line back at the same depth that I had last time.  After a bit of a wait something hit my line just as hard as before, this time it stayed on longer than 20 seconds.  My pole looked like it was going to snap, whatever I’d hooked was pulling a hell of a lot harder than that 93 pound wahoo!  After fighting it for 20 minutes I was getting freaking winded.  I needed to adjust my grip and just barely touched the bottom of the pole to the railing so I could adjust my grip and snap the line went again.

Just then a deck hand finally ran up to give me a hand and said yep don’t touch it to the railing!  sorry we should have gotten you a belt.   Oh well, good to know the railing tip for next time.

Shortly after my second broken line another guy hooked a monster fish and this time had help from the crew and managed to pull in this shark that was let go.

All in all we had a good time and Cece had a lot of fun and now wants to come back and go again!

Our haul for the day.

Cece holding up our pair of atlantic sharpnose sharks.  These are full grown and good eating!

Dolphin Docks does a great job cleaning the fish afterwards if you’d like here is what that wahoo looked like afterwards.

Since we were on the bike we bought a box of ziplock bags and you put a few pieces of fish in with a little bit of water and burp out all of the air.  Then it can be blast frozen with Dolphin Docks freezer and shipped back home.

I didn’t have time to call my neighbor who took delivery of the fish.  He said he got home one day to find a giant box and couldn’t remember what he’d bought then opened it up, wow fish!

 

95 pound fiance posing with 93 pound fish LOL

Good haul for the boat that day.

Went to the beach today after getting fishing tickets for tomorrow and going through some swimwear and t-shirt shops in town.

Crabs were everywhere!  Many different kinds too, only got decent pictures of 4 species.  Never seen so many different kinds in one place.

Ghost crabs live on land, there are burrows for these everywhere in the sand near the water.   Cece had never seen one before so I tried to dig one of the smaller ones up, the bigger burrows are wayyy too deep.   That burrow was empty but we got lucky and found a few walking around on the way back to the bike.

The blue crabs were rather feisty.  If a shadow went over the water while they were.. ahem, busy.. the males would snap their claws out of the water and splash.   The first one surprised and scared Cece so badly she screamed and fell backwards, almost completely off the rocks into the water, then I almost fell in the water from laughing so hard.

Cece holding a baby hermit crab we found.  When it came back out of its shell it started trying to graze on her hand and trying to pinch and pull algae off her palm.  “Ow ow ow! Hurry up and take the picture!”

Lots of hermit crabs in the rock jetties.

Stone crab?

With the bike all back together and running smoothly it was time to head off to try another go at some deep sea fishing!

I had ended up needing to replace the stator and pickup coil for the second time and while all the guts were ripped out I went ahead and put in my HID headlight kit that had been sitting on my shelf for over a year and installed another HID aux light on my fork with a new and improved mount.  Look for writeups on the lighting to show up here at some point.

As we’ve been this way many times before and theres not exactly a lot to see in eastern New Mexico and west Texas we weren’t planning on stopping and taking any pictures along the way.  When we saw this green alien chainsawed out of a cottonwood tree in Roswell, however, we couldn’t resist the opportunity for a cool photo op and whipped a U turn.    I guess Roswell is trying to get in on some of the chainsaw art action like Ruidoso up the mountain with all of it’s chainsaw bears.

Almost ran out of gas in Texas again… We saw a sign that listed the next town at 30 or so miles and decided to keep going and that next town did not have a gas station and wasn’t a town at all, it was the ruins of an old court house and a plaque on the side of the road.  Next real town was another 45 miles further, uh oh!   We cruised at 50mph to conserve fuel and just made it on fumes.

We were getting pretty low in altitude and the bike was running rough and backfiring through the carbs again so we took this stop to relax in the AC while letting the bike cool down and switch out carb jets.  While laying on my back trying to screw float bowl screws back in without burning my knuckles the 10th person walked over to see if I needed any help and then started asking about the bike and where we were headed.  He liked the bike and when I saw what he was driving I offered a trade, my color and everything.

Family reunion!    I hadn’t seen my cousins Christy and Cindy in years, while passing through the area the next day we had to meet up and introduce Cece to everyone.  Good to meet up and catch up some but we had a long ways to go and couldn’t stay long and I forgot to get a picture of everyone.  Thanks for the breakfast!

Oh yeah, we did see this huge texas sage bush in full bloom at a gas station, we’ve never seen anything like it before.  There were thick hedges of the stuff along peoples fences and driveways very pretty.  Cece’s Mom has a small puny bush of it but it never has many flowers and never as full as this.