Last week I was invited to go bass fishing.  Something I haven’t done in 20 years.  The best part is that the location was just an hour drive away.  Our morning half day charter began with a meeting in a Home Depot parking lot where we met Capt. Roger Gonzales.  He is one of the guides with BassOnline.com.  A short drive away to some private property that only he has access to and we were launching the skiff.  This location was a bit sparse on the scenery and natural beauty that most fishing trips provide, but I quickly got over that when the Peacock Bass started biting.  These are amazing little fish.  We did some sight casting with top water plugs to fish along the shoreline.  And some slow trolling with live shiners along the drop off.  The topwater bites are remind me of a Jack Crevalle, fast and aggressive.  Our biggest catch was about 4 lbs, with plenty of smaller fish.  Even a few Largemouth Bass too.  All in all, a great trip full of action.  Roger runs a fantastic charter operation and really knows hows these fish think and how to get them to bite.  I highly recommend a fishing trip with him if you want to see some South Florida Peacocks.

Just back from a morning half up the coast.  Every so often things come together and everything goes just right: weather, bait, bites.  This was one of those days.  Thanks to my friend Fly for hosting and showing me how good South Florida Snook fishing can be.

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It’s a busy week for workstation maintenance in the office.  Lot’s of updates and upgrades going on.  It started with a single hard drive failure.  For five years I’ve been spinning a Western Digital Raptor drive.  It has been a solid workhorse as a OS X boot drive, although I would call it’s death premature.  Lucky for me it failed slowly with some clicking and read/write issue.  I was able to grab my /user folder with all my preferences before unplugging this drive for the last time.  Perfect time to try out an SSD for a boot drive from OWC.  Wow, what a difference in speed when opening and closing programs.  No heat, no noise, blink, done.  And then came the pull of Adobe’s newest software version of Photoshop CS6.  Plenty of cool new features to play with.  Although still plenty of bugs that have it crashing time after time when trying to save a simple single file.  Dozens of crash reports later and Adobe informs me that it’s Apple’s fault.  Hmmmm, I’m not convinced.  I figured out a work around and also notice that at times CS6 is painfully slow performing some basic tasks.  Since a new Mac Pro is not going to happen anytime soon for me (or ever happen if you believe Apple’s recent WWDC announcement).  Time to switch back to CS5 and make this old CPU keep working for a few more years.  But wait, maybe now is the time to upgrade video cards.  My original NVIDA 7300 GT 256MB has been a fine card, but it isn’t Open CL capable and is a bit short on memory.  So a switch to a Radeon 5770 1 GB card would give me loads of video memory and Open CL performance.  This will also let me make to big switch from iMovie to Final Cut Pro.  Oh the joy of new software and a few hundred hours of a learning curve.

I recently had the opportunity to shoot the newest boat to leave the shed at Weaver Boatworks – 80′ Islamar.  This boat was going to be stopping in Palm Beach for a few days during it’s delivery to Puerto Rico for it’s new owner.  I caught up with it one day in the boat yard for some interior work.  And then the next morning offshore while Jim Weaver and the new owners took her out for a Marlin Magazine boat review.  What an amazing boat.  Weaver has again raised the bar for state of the art custom boatbuilding with this hull.  Here is a boat review piece I put together.  Thanks to Andy at Ocean Helicopters for the ride.

To see more still images of this incredible sport fisherman on my AquaPaparazzi.com photo web site, type “Weaver” in the keyword search box.

What do you get the guy who has everything? Well if you have a real good friend who thinks outside of the box, it’s easy. A client recently hired me to sneak up on his best friend and take his picture. Cool idea, makes a great gift. All the more special when your plan is to catch this guy by surprise with a group of his best friends out having fun. It took a few people on the inside to pull it off smoothly, but in the end this plan came together. The idea was to catch him when he least expects it… something like several miles offshore using a Robinson 44 as a tripod. Surprise! Thanks to Florida Coast to Coast Helicopters for the smooth ride.

The show has come and gone, so has the rain.  Unlucky timing for all involved as a tropical blob sat on top of the show weekend forcing one of two days to be canceled.  I went down to the beach for practice day and had a nice window of weather.  Click the image below to see some highlights:

That’s the first thing that came to mind this afternoon while sitting in my house. It didn’t take long to connect the dots however. It is Fleet Week here in FLL. And that can mean only one thing. The aerial might of the US Military is in town and getting ready for the Air Show this weekend. It wasn’t thunder I was hearing, it was the sound of Freedom! We were treated to multiple fly overs by the US Air Force Thunderbirds at what seemed like tree top level. My neighborhood appears to be one of the turning points for part of their show. Incredible hardware, unforgettable sound. I was lucky enough to get to meet and photograph the team in their lair a few years ago…somewhere in the Nevada dessert. What a cool experience to see them in their house. Now I got to seem them in mine.

A pair of birds parked in the driveway – Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Fighting Falcon.

The team relaxing on the ground.

Polished and ready to rock – top speed 1,320 mph / 29,000 lbs of thrust

The entire flock.

That is one bad ass air pump.

A private client had me up in the air over Ft. Lauderdale last week. Great to see the home town from that angle at sunrise. Above is a stretch of Lauderdale beach condo density over the R44 console. Below is Hillsboro inlet on a perfect day to go boating.

Doesn’t have nearly the same ring as Blue Water, but it’s fishing just the same. This trip found me peddling a Hobie Kayak thru the Mangrove estuary of Estero Bay on the SW Florida coast. Tackle as light as you dare, since the fish are all pretty small. We stuck with casting artificials and had some pretty good action on top. You can’t beat the variety either – Snook, Ladyfish, SeaTrout, and Red Drum. All that and I didn’t have to deal with any salt spray. You might get to see this stuff more often…

It’s amazing how easy it is to cancel weekend plans when the phone rings for work. Particularly when it’s Hatteras Yachts and they need a few shots of a unique vessel. This photo shoot was a few quick shots of a Cabo 44 that was transiting thru South Fla on it’s way to the Gulf. I only had a brief time as this delivery crew was anxious to keep moving and beat a cold front that was bearing down on their destination. Luckily they found an overnight slip near Port Everglades and gave me the next morning to work. A few quick shots and they were on their way. What a cool express boat configuration. I can’t wait to take one fishing…