PLAN B, our 19 foot BW Outrage was in Cedar Key so this was going to be our base of departure with the thought of scalloping out of Crystal River or Homosassa River.
Arriving at Cedar Key by mid-afternoon it took until 4 p.m. to get PLAN B ready. It was pretty calm so I figured we could quickly speed out to Crystal River (19 miles) and quickly find some scallops (Plan B needed to be run) . We didn’t have a whole lot of time and stopping to look at a couple of spots without finding any I found myself pushing further to Homosassa in search of scallops.
Near the mouth of the Homosassa River we eventually found a few scallops and the kids got to bag their first scallops. With the sun about to set we had to quickly run back to Cedar Key (by now a 30 mile run).
Runnin to Crystal River
Jana’s first scallop
Harrison’s first scallop
Matt’s first scallop
Scallywags
The next day if was choppy and we didn’t want to run the 30 miles to Homosassa so we trailered PLAN B to Steinhatchee. Storms were everywhere but by 1 p.m. we had a hole in the weather and we managed to get out. We ran south of Steinhatchee and seeing airboats in the shallows I figured they already knew where the scallops were. We only had to stop once and we found the scallops in a high enough abundance to stay put. The photos tell the rest of the story.
Steinhatchee:
We caught a striped burrfish in the grass using a net
Burrfish release
A happy Steinhatchee crew
Final touches to a nice scalloping adventure:
A scallop, lobster, & shrimp paella
Gotta love passing on these kinds of adventures.
Hoo Yah!!
Brian
