Please let this be it. Eighty degrees, light west wind, nice little swell curling out on the bar. Off island for a few days, we came back today and opened up the house.  Palms and palmettos swaying, cats lazing around, this is what we’ve been waiting for.  Overnight it’s T-shirts, shorts, and bare feet.  Hope it lasts.

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Everybody’s feeling it.  A Monday holiday to coincide with the first good weather in months. Traffic on A1A heavy; the beaches full; people walking, fishing; some brave little grom surfers in the water.  Looks like a full-on summer weekend. May have to break out the fishing rods this week.  They are all rigged and ready to go, but every day when I check the guys down there fishing are still wearing waders.  And these are snowbirds! They’ll be around through March, probably, then head back north, and we’ll have the beach to ourselves.  Water should be up near sixty this week, which is warm enough to wade.  Some big whiting are showing up, and the occasional red, but no bluefish after mullet yet.  We’ll definitely mix it up when they show.  Blues are aggressive and fun to catch.  They’re also very good smoked, and even better grilled.  A lot of folks don’t care for them; it’s a dark meat fish, but very flavorful. About ninety percent of what everybody catches is whiting, though, a firm, white flesh fish, you can fix just about any old way. You catch a lot of sail cats through the summer, which are completely useless, and little bonnet sharks in the spring.  They have a head like a hammerhead, and a one-pounder can feel ten times heavier.  People sometimes land bigger sharks.  There was a big filleted carcass on the beach one morning last summer.  I was out on the board and commented about it to another old timer who’d joined me.  He’d lived around here a good bit longer than us and told me a Jacksonville shark club has been driving this far south for years to shark fish at night.  He said they chum the water to bring in big ones.  I’ve never seen anybody shark fishing at night, but the idea of chumming was not very appealing.  My few shark encounters have been amicable, and I’d like to keep it that way.

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Garden gets planted this week, too.  Rather ambitiously, we acquired several packs of seed this weekend: yellow and zucchini squash, green onions, cantaloupe, cucumbers, green beans, okra, and radishes.  Going to set tomatoes and peppers from plants.  Busy week.  Stay posted with The Skinny Island Post!