Good Time Charters

What a wonderful morning dolphin and shelling cruise we had. The dolphins were abundant and we even saw a few manatee. We found several sea stars at the island and lots of pretty shells. We received this photo from a family that cruised out with us on a recent tour. In the photo is their daughter Melanie with a spiny sea star, learning about them from our guide Cristina. This cruise was great and we saw so much wildlife.

We have had some great tours so far this summer. The dolphin in the pic we have named Jack knife. She jumps vertically completely out of the water and then reverses nose first back into the water. She has a calf with her that often jumps along side her. They are soo fun to watch. On a recent morning dolphin and shelling cruise, we not only saw lots of manatees and dolphins, we found a live horse conch at our shelling island. The other picture is of one of our passengers holding the conch. The tides have been so high, with strong tides around our new moon, so the shelling has been challenging, but we are still finding nice shells, sea stars, horseshoe crabs, and lots of othersealife around the shoreline.

On one of our morning shelling and dolphin cruises last week we saw a baby snowy egret entangled in fishing line dangling from a low lying branch head down in the water. We thought it was no longer alive and Cristina, our marine biologist and naturalist, waded over to it to cut all the line out of the trees to prevent another entanglement, and to release the unfortunate bird. To our surprise the egret was still alive and struggling to keep his head above water. The egret was exhausted and seemed completely content resting on Cristina’s hand. We were able to get it to a wildlife hospital on Sanibel. Unfortunately, the doctor called us 4 days later to inform us the little egret didn’t make it.

We love summer time here. The birds are nesting and our dophin also seem to be enjoying summer too. These shots were taken by our crew on a recent cruise.

We have been getting to know our resident dolphin and I have started cataloging the ones I see daily on our tours. This couple of dolphin in the photos I always observe together and they LOVE to play. I have named them Lipknot and Blackbeard. I have no idea of their gender yet but Blackbeard is much larger of the two and loves to do belly flops near the boat that will often splash us as we watch in awe. The top photo is of Lipknot, the bottom photo is Blackbeard.

Captain Mike Denegre of Good Time Charters reports the sheepshead spawn is on!   This past week captain Mike’s charters roped in loads of sheepshead in the 4 to 5 pound range.  All the fish were caught on small to medium live shrimp around oyster bars and the base of mangrove islands in areas of 3 to 4 feet deep.   Mixed in with the sheepshead were red fish and an occasional snook,  the better catches of the week being a nice 31 inch red caught using live shrimp on a jig head deep under the mangroves in good current.  When captain Mikes charters got tired of beating on the sheepshead it was to the trout holes where there was lots of action between slot trout and more ladyfish than you could shake a stick at.  The trout were found around the mangroves in areas of good current, picking up jigheads tipped with live shrimp.  For the trout and ladyfish bouncing the bait on the bottom or floating under a cork proved sufficient.  Several pompano and spanish mackeral were caught as well this past week in the back bay, an encouraging look at what may be ahead with this warmer weather.

What a wonderful morning for a boat ride. We saw many dolphin and birds along the way. Two of our passengers braved the cool water and went for a swim when we got to our shelling island! That water was too chilly for my southern-self! Brrrr!

Here is one of our many photos of one of the resident dolphins in our bay, “Notch” and her calf. We have been observing her for a few years now and we are quite fond of her. She often will swim and do acrobatic leaps near our boat with her calf alongside. Some days she is a little stand-offish towards us but this morning she was very social and interactive with us. What a wonderful display she gave us this beautiful morning on our Coastal Sealife, dolphin, and shelling cruise. Besides dolphin, we also spotted racoon, a huge flock of roseate spoonbills, night herons, and anhingas. On the shell island we found many seastars, many were still alive but there were a few that our passengers were able to keep. We can only hope that our passengers enjoyed the tour as much as we did.

Absolutely gorgous sunsets here over the Gulf of Mexico. We never tire of them. We haven’t posted a blog in a while. It has been a bit chilly here for boating and business has slowed greatly. Looking forward to the temperatures to climb back up to the upper 60′s and eventually the 70′s soon!

We have been having some spectacular sunsets recently, although we find ourselves saying that all the time here. And the dolphins have been loving these cold fronts that we have been having. We usually watch the sunset over the Gulf but were enjoying the dolphins so much that we lost track of time and watched the sunset over the bay instead. It was worth it though, the dolphins were doing all kinds of acrobatics for us and having so much fun. We still observed a gorgous sunset.