Fun and Fishing

Well the big 4th of July holiday has passed and we had a great time with our friends Dave and Janet.  So glad they could come visit.  We hope they had a nice relaxing vacation.  Dave and Keith got in some dinghy fishing on the 5th and 6th before they had to leave to cruise back to New Bern.  Dave and Keith were catching both trout and flounder.  Below are some of their catches.

Gray Trout

Speckled Trout picture courtesy of Dave Hawley

They caught several flounder. (Too bad we can not keep flounder yet).  Recreational flounder will open back up for fishing on August 16th and go through September 30th.   The size minimum is 15 inches and 4 legal sized flounder per person per day.  We cannot wait as it would be nice to have a little flounder in the freezer.

Here is one of the flounder (doormats) caught by Dave and Keith

The winds have been calm for several days and I got the kayak out.  It is fun to skulk around Teach's Hole and the tidal stream there.  I love watching the different kind of crabs and critters in the shallows.

Kayaking down the tidal stream

Blue crab and some bait fish

Blue crabs are common in North Carolina waters especially the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds.  They are the only crab of commercial value in North Carolina. They are mature at 12-18 months of age and average life span is 3-4 tears.  These crabs are popular for eating hence there are size and other limits to harvesting these crabs.

Blue crab up close (he was not happy with me taking his picture)

The hermit crab is an interesting critter.  They do not have an exoskeleton (hard shell like the blue crab) to protect their body, so they use the sea shells of other marine critters as their home and protection.  Hermit crabs are scavengers and feed on vegetative matter, dead fish, and plankton.

Hermit crab in the sand of the Pamlico Sound

Hermit crabs will use just about any shell they can find for a home.  Here are several along the edge of the sound in sharks eye shells and even two scotch bonnets.  I was very kind and did not evict them in order to claim the scotch bonnets.

Hermit crabs certainly are not good house keepers.  Their shell houses are often very muck covered.

The last type of crab I have pictures of is the Fiddler Crab.  There are actually about 100 species of fiddler crabs around the world.  Ocracoke has 3 main types.  There is the sand fiddler, mud fiddler, and marsh fiddler.  The ones I was finding along the sound were either mud or marsh fiddlers.  The females have two small claws, but the males have a very prominent large claw.  The males wave this claw around like a conductor at an orchestra.  

Fiddler Crabs hiding in the marsh grass.

Fiddler crabs live in large colonies and the marsh was just teeming with these guys.  They are very sly however.  As soon as I got even remotely close with the kayak, they scurried into the grass and were very tough to get a good picture of them.  There were thousands along the edge of the marsh.  So many I could hear them in the grass.  It sounds like Rice Crispy cereal soaking in milk.

The later part of the week brought a tropical system spinning off the coast with the threat of rain and wind.  Wednesday July 8th was cloudy with periods of rain.  Keith and I were even bigger slugs than usual.  I have been playing with a new app I loaded on the computer to edit photos.   That along with some sewing and reading kept me entertained for the poor weather.

View of the ferry terminal Wednesday evening with the low clouds

By the weekend the weather had cleared up and we had a pretty sunset