The next leg of our Rhode Island journey brought us to the Snug Harbor Marina where we met up with Captain Steve of Lady K Charters. The objective of this trip was to set out into the ocean and catch some fish (Fluke to be specific). Now, I was a little apprehensive about bringing my gear on to the boat, but after seeing what we were going to be fishing on, I knew I had to! Captain Steve runs his charters from a custom built 43 foot Carolina Express Fisherman with twin caterpillar 600 horsepower diesel engines. This was a very impressive vessel that had all of the features you might want for an ocean fishing adventure. Little did we know at the time that it was a very quick and very comfortable boat.
While we were waiting on the dock for the Captain to get the Lady K ready to go we watched two local kids try to catch some crabs with some meat tied to a string. It was impressive watching them throw the line out and seeing the crabs come after the food.
Once Captain Steve gave us the all clear we boarded the Lady K and took off from the marina. It was a warm day with a little bit of a breeze, but there wasn’t a whole lot of big wave action going on thankfully. As we exited the no wake area we heard (and felt) the power of the two powerful engines kick in and accelerated further out into the ocean.
My brother-in-law Adam noticed in the distance there was a helicopter hovering pretty close to the water out in the distance and we discovered that the coast guard does frequent practice rescue missions. I grabbed my camera and shot a few photos that I thought showed urgency and chaos using the splashing of the water on our boat and the framing of the photographs.
The Lady K began to slow down and Captain Steve came out to let us know we had reached our first of three fishing stops. He got our fishing poles ready with bait (I believe we started with squid) and told us to let the line go down until we felt it hit the ocean floor. I won’t try to claim I am a fisherman so I was a little bit lost. I often got my line tangled with others in my group and had to have the Captain show me some good techniques.
Thankfully everyone was patient with me as I was learning and right as I was beginning to get the hang of things the others were starting to catch fish which help boost my confidence. There were a couple fluke here and there; someone caught a rock attached to some seaweed even! The first sea creature I caught was a skate which happens to be a member of the ray family. The skate did in fact look like a stingray just without a stinger and with a prickly body instead.
We moved on to a second fishing spot closer to shore that didn’t give us any bites and then on to a third which provided better results. Everyone had caught a fluke expect for me. Adam even caught a very tiny sea bass that we got a picture of before he threw it back into the water.
Captain Steve told us that we needed to pack up our gear so we could head back to the Marina. I was a little bummed because I had not caught a fluke when everyone else had; luckily the captain announced we would be stopping shortly so he could fillet the fish the group caught.
He told us we could fish again and it was in this last desperation attempt I was able to catch a fluke!
In the excitement of me catching a fish everyone was distracted from what the captain was doing, he put a filleted fish on a line and put it in the water. He then went on to tell Jamison that there was a bite on a line and he should reel it in. Once Jamison discovered what I called the “zombie fish” everyone had one last good laugh before we got back to shore.
Side Note: We discovered a baby crab right off the dock of the house we were staying at later that day. This was probably one of my favorite photos from the trip and once I was able to capture it, we let the little guy go!
