A birthday to remember......

This past weekend marked the passing of another year in my life celebrating 42 years of age - my how time flies.  I didn't have any real aspirations or desires for the weekend save for the opportunity to kick back and enjoy time with the family.  The weekend started off with a roar on Friday night when I took the whole family to see Garbage play in concert at The National here in Richmond, VA.  They sounded awesome and played several of their new songs as well as some "oldies", including my personal favorite - I'm Only Happy When It Rains.

Saturday morning came all too early and the winds were blowing pretty strong.  My wife had a "Color Run" that morning, and I want nothing to do with that - too much like work that early in the morning for my tastes.  While she was doing her benefit run, I took the opportunity to do some minor rigging on my son's kayak for a trip to the water later in the day.  I added a YakAttack Mighty Mount in the front, so my son or wife could use one of my RAM Mount rod holders.  I also rigged up a makeshift anchor trolley using some spare floating anchor line I had.  I think the only thing left to add are two RAM Tube rod holders for the rear tracks.

After my wife came home and cleaned up, I checked the winds at my planned launch and even checked with two fishing buddies (Joe and Darren) on the weather and water conditions.  They advised me not to even try it - waves of 2 feet at the launch and winds gusting over 20mph.  With that new information in hand,  we decided to stay a little closer to home and do some bank fishing at a local pond.  We each caught a few small 8-10" largemouth bass, and I even managed to snag a fat snapping turtle who was none too happy about it.  He wasn't the biggest I had seen, but at 14" in length down his shell, he was still pretty hefty.  We wrapped up the day with a couple errands and then some play time outside back home.

Sunday morning came and the weather had calmed down significantly overnight.  I checked the conditions online for the same launch from the day before and found that the winds and rain weren't supposed to move in until around dinner time, so we loaded up the kayaks and made our way to the water.  We launched into the start of the outgoing tide and made our way quickly to the inlet and adjacent shallow bay.  The winds were really calm, and the current wasn't too swift.  Even though the outgoing tide was moving swiftly at the mouth of the inlet, it wasn't too fast in the shallow bay so holding position was relatively easy, and neither my wife nor I had to use the anchors.

It was a day filled with catching fish, playtime in the sand for my son and awesome sights captured in digital form.  The highlights of the trip were my wife catching a good sized croaker, and my son catching his largest trout to date at a fat 16 1/2"........

My wife was able to capture some real cool nature shots during our outing as well.  Good thing too, since my camera photos were all blurred from my past trip where water got on the camera lens.  Lesson learned - clean your optics before you launch.  Some other kayak friends have informed me that Rain X works, so I will have to try that before my next trip.

Here are some of the cooler shots my wife was able to capture.  Enjoy!!

Needless to say, it was a great way to spend my birthday.