The Ocean Filled With Bounty

The ocean was filled with a bounty just a few feet from shore

One day many years ago while living in Wisconsin, my mother came home telling my father that their dentist had strange ideas.  During her visit with him, he  told her he heard that she was moving to Florida. She denied it. Then he told her that she was buying a trailer and pulling it to florida. My dad wasn’t laughing. He had told the dentist but didn’t tell her.

A few months later we headed down to Florida pulling a 40 by 8 foot Tradewinds travel trailer. Our first stop was on Military Trail where we were surrounded by sugar cane. We stayed there for a couple of months, till someone told my parents about Briny Breezes.

I’ll never forget the day we drove there to check it out, it love at first sight. We rented a space on E row, inside.  Our next door neighbor was a WW1 vet who had been gassed and coughed constantly. What a life, the poor man. A few months later F208 opened up, 114 Bay drive much later, so we moved right on the yacht basin with a nice view of the Intracoastal Waterway. What a paradise! I remember schools of mullet swimming in the basin, with thirty or fifty fish in a school. Then with something big chasing them they would scatter and jump.

At the time we allowed live ins in the basin and a retired priest lived on a sailboat across from us. The bait shop was at the head of the street and was very active. We had a lot of fishermen then who lived in Briny. The fishing club was more than a social group. In the afternoon they would return and soon a knock on our door with king-fish, snapper, grouper, all nicely filleted.

The ocean was filled with bounty. In just five feet of water I could dive down and find several lobster under a rock or reef. I’d see their antenna sticking out, check for Moray eels, then grab them. I had an inner tube with a bag hung in the middle. One day, under a reef on the south side I saw the granddaddy of them all, a huge lobster. Of course he didn’t grow that old without being wily so I never could catch him.

From time to time Janet Folsom and I would go to North Boca, a good reef. One day a lady admired our catch and invited us to park in her driveway in Highland Beach. Since there was no parking that whole stretch we had an exclusive as we agreed to leave a few for her each time. So for a year we had our own wonderful reef.

One time we caught a day when they were chaining with lobsters lined up as far as the eye could see. We caught over 100 that day. You simply found the tail end of the chain and carefully grabbed the last one, then moved up. I sold them to Busch’s Seafood restaurant for 50 cents a tail. Big money in those days. The downside was my arms and hands were scratched and scarred all year around. The coral reefs were tough.   Another danger on the reef were the sea urchins, thousands of them. Who knew they were edible, as this was long before sushi.

Another source of income was fancy lures caught on the reef. In those days quite a few Brinyites and others fished from the beach. Many times their lures would snag and break the line. I had a nice collection for sale, probably a buck per lure.

More stories by Fred House at http://www.briny-breezes.com/blog/briny-articles-by-fred-house