Florida Lobster

Chuck and I loved to fish, and living at the Park on Stock Island was an ideal situation for us. He had a 14 foot boat but he had left it with a friend in St. Petersburg to keep for him till he was settled again someplace.

We were surrounded by water and could fish almost anywhere. There were canals throughout the Park, but we had not been fortunate enough to get one of those spots.

Islander Drive-in Theater

There was a point at the end of the Park we found that we could sit and fish every night and watch and hear the movie at the same time. 

Look closely at the top right of the photo, between the hedge around the Drive-In and the little white building is where the point was located that we sat to fish. This was next to the channel that ran under the Stock Island Bridge and directly across from the U S Naval Hospital.

A smaller channel 8 to 10 feet deep that branched off the Stock Island channel ran up next to the bank which was all sizes of rocks where we sat and fished, and I think you can see the smaller channel in the photo, we caught all kinds of fish there. Grunts, yellowtail, snapper etc, we always had fresh fish to eat and enough to freeze some too.

One night we were fishing and I got something on my line, I would reel in a bit and it would stop. It felt heavy but didn't fight like a fish. Chuck laughed and teased, "You have some Florida real estate hooked."

But I continued reeling in when I could, and eventually I had it close enough, I said, "Shine the light down here and let's see what I have on my line." When he shined the light we could see that it was a big Spiny Lobster (Longusta or just Guster), some folks call them Florida Crayfish

A Spiny Lobster

The light caused it to go nuts, in thrashing around trying to get away from the light it broke loose, and skittered underneath the rocks we were sitting on.  Chuck had to get overboard while I held the light for him and get hold of the antennae to carefully work it out, if you aren't really careful doing this the antennae will break off.

We weren't ready to stop fishing for the night and had to figure out what to do with the Lobster. Chuck looked in the tackle box and found an extra fish stringer and lassoed the Guster and tied it to a rock.

But our crazy dog would not leave it alone, he was so curious about it. The Lobster was going crazy.  I finally told Chuck, "I don’t want to lose my Lobster let’s call it a night." That one large broiled Lobster tail with baked potato and salad was enough for dinner for the two of us.