The Recent Lunar Eclipse and Cold Water Fishing

Its been a busy week and we did manage to get outside, despite the cold and windy weather. Being a retired astronomy teacher, we had to watch the lunar eclipse and we both tried to take some images. We also went to the Gulf Coast Gem and Minerals rock shop and the wind abated enough to allow us to go kayaking for a few hours.

In the thirty years of teaching Earth Science and Astronomy, I was the host of many star parties. When a special event occurred, I trained our telescopes to the heavens, although for a lunar eclipse, one could best watch with binoculars.

So, while all the hype of a blood moon and super blood moon made me shake my head a little as this one neared. The color of the moon, during an eclipse depends on the dust in the atmosphere and can vary widely. Sometimes its slightly darkened, sometimes it is almost black, and sometimes it has a reddish or orange cast.

Here in Rockport, Texas the moon had a reddish cast on its upper hemisphere and a dark cast on the lower hemisphere. We tried taking images and of course the best shots we took were with the smallest diameter lenses. That means they were blurry as a large lens works better as it has more light gathering ability. We were able to see the curve of the Earth’s shadow which is one of the proofs that the earth is a sphere, (wake up all of you flat earth loonies).

With all the cold and windy weather, we did travel to the rock shop and sawed a piece of rough zoisite with rubies, and chit chat with the other members. The best works of the day were by a member who had several beautiful Kentucky agates and another who was patiently polishing a large agate slab.

Yesterday the wind went below ten miles per hour, our upper kayak limit and we headed out to one of our favorite places to cold weather fish. Many of the others in the park, all power boat owners told me that we wouldn’t catch anything as the fish wouldn’t eat because of the cold water.

It didn’t matter to us as any chance to kayak, enjoy any birds, and catching fish would simply be a bonus. The birds cooperated and Renita was able to take several images of rosette spoonbills, immature and mature white ibis.

We tried several spots before we reached our favorite hole.  On my second cast a fish hit, and it was a keeper black drum. As fast as I cast out, I caught fish and Renita finally joined the fun with both red drum and black drum hitting our dead shrimp. I even caught a small speckled trout.

It only took two hours before we ran out of bait! As usual Renita had caught the largest black drum. I did lose a fish from our floating live well and so we ended up catching nine keepers and taking home seven blacks, (In the above image you can see our friend Terry who joined us and caught four keeper blacks).

I guess the fish will hit if you can figure out where to fish! The question now is how to cook the fillets for dinner! Nothing like fresh fish!