It's been a couple of months since I returned to Arkansas from Florida to take care of family business. Now, I am headed back to Florida but not to live. This is a deep sea fishing trip with my brother Johnny and cousin, Billy.

For my brother and I, this will be our first deep sea fishing experience . Our older and wiser cousin has a life-time of deep sea fishing experiences, though. We are headed to Panama City, Florida for our trip.

Billy and his wife have a nice 2nd home about 40 miles from Panama City. This is where we will meet them and stay during our outing. They are very good hosts and make us feel welcome. The following day is filled with touring the area. We were really having a nice family visit.

Saturday we head out for the boat around 5 a.m. We will go on a 10 hour trip and hopefully catch a lot of fish. The trip out to sea is very quiet, with no big waves to make anyone sick. The weather could not be better. We are all excited and can't wait for the 1 1/2 ride to finish so we can sink our hooks in the water.

Soon enough, we are letting our reels out to 110 ft deep in order to fish on the bottom. If the fishing is good the boat stays in the same spot until it slows down . If the fish are small or slow to bite, we reel our lines up and the boat moves to a better spot. The entire day works like this and everyone is having a really good time. At the end of the day we take home over 40 fish. Many we had to throw back because they were out of season to catch or too small to keep. 

This is a sport I certainly hope to do more of. It turned out to be so much fun.

The next morning early Johnny and I head home. We have 500 miles or so to go. The ride is pleasant and we enjoy talking and traveling together. We have never had the chance for just the two of us to travel and this has given us a good chance to catch up on our visit.

We both were impressed with the hospitality that Billy and Luzetta showed us. Many thanks to them for a time to remember. We enjoyed meeting a lot of Luzetta's family, and they were all very nice and friendly to us. 

I usually travel alone and it was good to have a good travel companion like Johnny. The ride home went a lot faster with his pleasant company, and I didn't have to drive the entire way myself like I usually do.