04:50, 73F, foggy. waning full moon over the palmettos west of the house. roosters quiet. pup in pen carrying on. barred owl hoo-ing out in the NW woods. packed lunch.
going to trawl the seagrass meadows up in steinhatchee. have to meet the crew at 07:00 in cowtown.
08:40 the suwannee looked pretty high when we crossed it in fannin'. 6 turkeys along side the road to jenna. high tide on the steinhatchee river. we lucked out and got to the ramp before all the scallopers and didn't have to wait.
apalachee bay: 80's, W wind 5 knts. in the a.m. with a light chop . gradually increasing to 10 knts. in the p.m. sunny. water temperature, 29.6C - 85F. got big catches - lots of seagrass dwellers and some YOY black sea bass, hogfish, and 2 YOY gags, which is what we are looking for for diet, life history, and habitat studies. got one huge flounder, par. albigutta, over 300 mm. it disappeared in a flash when I threw it back over.
mid-morning the river spewed boats into the estuary. racing out of the channel, recreational scalloping boats headed out in all directions in groups of 4-6 boats that were racing each other. between the tide and the boat wakes the water was choppy. when we were finishing up, everyone must have gotten their limit. all the boats went back into the river. there were races to the no-wake sign..
we did trawl up a fair amount of scallops that got measured and, sigh, returned to the water. some of our sites had a lot of scallops, others only had a few.
16:20, big rainstorm in live oak on our way back and another not so big one in cowtown. I got groceries and dog food since it had stopped raining.
17:00, just stopped raining at the farm. puddles on the road in but lane is dry. let newdog and the pup out to help me unload the truck. no help at all there..
19:15, 81F, partly cloudy, partly sunny. mosquitos are still plaguing the yard and the outside critters. my bug light has quit zapping. and don't tell me that they just zap moths because I've cleaned hundreds of mosquitos out of them. more mosquitos than moths, actually..
21:00, 78F, humid and mosquitoey. there might be a few stars out. foggy. field tomorrow. trawling off the cedar keys..
