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The first Saturday's weather was
perfect... clear sky and dead calm. LAFA's August fly out (part one)
was off to a great start. We were going fly-fishing as only LAFA can!
08:15 hours found the
valiant adventurers at the X-51 pre-flight briefing which went something
like this:
"Are we ready?" ...
"Yeah - think so" ... "Right then, let's go!"
The expedition was thus
under way. Dick and Sandy Bronnenberg in their Trike; Mike Chin in his
Rans; Bob Musgrove in his Kolb; Jeff Obermeier in his PPC; and Peter &
Patrick Volum in their Kolb. Ron, Claire and Ida Andersen traveled by land
with Duke Donavan as our ground support team loaded with coolers of cold
drinks and assorted munchies.
All except Jeff landed.
While the fishing team set-up the gear (three poles between ten people...
oops), Jeff circled overhead and scanned the horizon for signs of aquatic
life below.
  Almost
immediately, a large alligator came over to see what the ruckus was about.
He seemed quite friendly so we named him "Wally" and voted him into
LAFA as an honorary member. (Actually, we wanted to charge him for his
dues, but nobody volunteered to collect).
Peter got the first catch
of the day when he succeeded in hooking his own shoe-lace. (The shoe
put up quite a struggle but the use of pliers ultimately led to a successful
release).
 When
Cap'n Bob put his pole down for a minute,
 Wally
sneaked up, grabbed the floater in his
mouth and silently swam away. Backwards!
Cap'n Bob watched in dismay as the gator
reversed to the middle of the canal with his pole in tow, then stopped to stare at Bob
with a "come and get it!" expression.
When Wally realized that nobody was in the
mood to play tag, he swam back with the pole. Peter was then able to
snag the line with his fishing rod, then Bob wrestled it away from Wally.
The successful recovery of the pole became our second - and final - catch of
the day.
(The video below
includes scenes of the Bob vs. Gator fishing pole tug-of-war contest).
Safety always comes first
with LAFA and Saturday's fishing expedition was no exception. At no
point during the entire event was there any danger of a fish getting caught
or hurt.
We finally decided that we
hadn't spent enough time flying so we packed-up, performed our civic duty by
collecting some trash left behind by other less conscientious persons
(certainly not pilots), and we headed back to the clouds - and home - via
Key Largo.
We flew, we fished,
we had fun. That's the LAFA way of "fly fishing".
One thing is for
sure... if our lives depended on catching any fish though ... we'd be dead
meat!
Click
HERE to see the video in wmv
format.
(Note: The video is 1.8MB
in size. If you don't have a high speed connection, right mouse-click and
"save-as" then play it from your desktop).
The following Saturday we
did it all again, but this time the weather wasn't as cooperative.
Cap'n Bob (Kolb), Jim Lindberg (Trike) and Peter & Ryan Volum (Kolb)
departed from Homestead General and were later joined by Donny Amador and
Graham Haward who landed in the Aero-Jet canal in Donny's Aventura.
That fishing expedition
was cur short, however, when dark clouds chased us away. There were no
photos of the day's catch, as no camera was taken (but then again - there
were no fish either).
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