National Hot Dog Month is Over

What would you do the first day of the month following a month where you ate a hot dog a day at a different place? I spent July doing just that.

Know what I did the day following the end of National Hot Dog Month?

I WENT FISHING!!!!

We were up with the sun.

We motored over to Martha's Vineyard and fished off Noman's Island for bluefish and striped bass.

I caught a TON of bluefish- gonna throw these babies in the smoker!

Lots of stripers too for fish and chips and fish tacos.

Then we popped over to Aquinnah for Black Sea Bass and Fluke.

The sea bass we caught is a delicate whitefish...

...as is the fluke. We'll be stuffing these with crab and lobster meat!

After a month of hot dogging, it was nice to get out on the water for a full day of fishing with my wife, son, and dad.

Back to Hot Dogs tomorrow!!!!

Gone Fishin'

The Hot Dog Truck will be "closed" for the day.

GONE FISHING!

Fishin' in Venice

I went to Venice, FLA with my 4 daughters and my wife. It was a fun filled week of boating, a trip to Adventure Island, the beach, hot dogs, and fishing.

I wake up at 6:30 as a rule. This means that if I waited around for the girls to get ready for the beach, I would be sitting around on the lanai for about 3 hours every day, drinking coffee.

I decided a better way to go about it was to head down to the Venice fishing pier and try my luck while the girls slumbered, showered and organized themselves.

There's lots to see at the pier, including dolphins and manatees (that's a dolphin surfacing below- the manatees were camera shy).

The real attraction at the pier is fishing. There is a whole group of regulars at the pier who contribute to the charm and character of a stroll on the pier, patiently answering the "did you catch anything" type of questions from the tourist crowd.

I have seen some big fish caught out here over the years, including a 6 foot bull shark and a 50 pound kingfish. This guy had a good size cobia on the line...

...alas, his line boke,  :O(

I managed to land a small (by New England standards) bluefish which we had in some fish tacos for supper.

Little Miss even got into the act one day. It was the first time she'd ever been fishing and she landed a small flounder on her second cast.

This was very exciting for her, but it was the worst possible scenario for me: she was now an "expert."

Any way you slice it, a day of fishing at the Venice fishing pier is....

Southbound!

After the worst winter in recent memory and a spring season that can't quite get into gear, it is going to be nice to get on a plane this morning and head to sunny Florida for a week with the family! The only one not joining us is the dog-she's staying behind with my brother in law to mind the fort.

As soon as I click "publish" on this post, we are off to the airport and we will be in lovely Venice, Florida by 3PM.

We have a Hot Dog Story or two planned for our trip, a boating excursion to an awesome State Park/Nature reserve, some fishing, a trip to Busch gardens' Water Park and, of course, daily trips to the beach and pool.

I don't know if I will be able to keep on my nutrition regimen, but I do intend to hit the health club every morning.

I'll be posting from Florida, I hope to have a few pictures of HUGE fish I caught for publication too.

Off to the airport....

Ciao!

Fantastic Fishing

Today the Hotdogman became the Fishing man. Every summer, my dad, my son and myself charter a boat and go do some deep sea fishing. Last summer we had the BEST FISHING TRIP EVER with Captain Pete Midurski on the good ship Margaret and Stephanie. Nothing breeds success like repetition, so we opted to go fishing with Pete again this summer. This time even Mrs. Hotdogman managed to tag along!

It was a gorgeous summer Sunday in Fairhaven Harbor.


We made our way over to Martha's Vineyard and fished off a ledge near Squibnocket. The Captain had tempered our expectations stating the fishing hadn't been very good this summer. We were going to fish with chunk poagies-just like last year. Needless to say the Hotdogman landed the first fish of the day on the first cast of the day-a nice keeper bluefish! Here's Captain Pete with the freshly gutted bluefish.


Unfortunately, Capt. Pete had slippery fingers and dropped the fish overboard right after the picture was taken. I mercilessly teased him about this faux pas for the entire day, of course. Lucky for us, there were more bluefish out there.

The good news is the good Captain's doom and gloom predictions did not come true. We had an EXCELLENT DAY catching about 8 bluefish, a couple dozen striped bass, half a dozen fluke and a very big scup (we catch lots of scup off the docks, but I have never caught one this big-he was DELICIOUS).

Here's Mrs. HDM with the big fluke she hauled in.


Here's one of the stripers.


I think we'll be giving Capt. Pete a call next summer-I should have finished eating all the fish by then!

If you want a good chartered fishing trip in the Southeastern, MA area- give Capt. Pete a call at 774-353-7683. Just make sure he hangs on to your fish!

BEST FISHING TRIP EVER!

I have been fishing since I was about 6 years old. Fresh water, salt water, it doesn't matter. I prefer the sea though.

Sunday my dad, my son and I chartered a boat to go out and get some STRIPERS. The trip was AWESOME! We went out on the Margaret and Stephanie out of Fairhaven, MA. Captain Pete Midurski. We met Pete on the dock at about 5:30 AM and he was talking to some of his fellow boat captains. As we approached Pete, one of his buddies set the tone by saying "If you're going out with Pete, I hope you brought your own gear and a Bible!"

Pete told us to stow our gear on "the white boat." Been to a marina lately? THEY'RE ALL WHITE. Too funny. So after a few minutes, we're motoring over to Cuttyhunk head on into 2-3 foot seas. It was a bouncy journey and I kept spilling my much needed coffee. It took about an hour to motor down Buzzards Bay to our first (and only) fishing spot of the day off of Cuttyhunk Island, an island at the "bottom" of Buzzard's Bay.

We dropped anchor off a ledge and started "chunking," which is bottom fishing with pieces of cut up Poagies. I had my line in about two minutes and WHAM a monster striper was on the hook! We brought him in, bled him and set him aside in the cooler. We were fishing from about 7 AM to noon and did not go five minutes without one of us landing a fish! I lost count at about 25 fish. We kept one more and let the rest go. If we hadn't done that, we'd have been eating fish chowder until 2009! The action was incredible and your's truly landed a 44 3/4 inch PORKER for the big fish of the day. Everything we caught was keeper size (26 inches or more) with most of the fish coming in around 36 inches! We also caught one sand shark and two scup.




We were back at the house in time to catch the Red Sox most recent pounding of the White Sox, an 11-2 shellacking that the three of us slept through most of! For dinner we had, you guessed it, Striped Bass! We grilled the filets with a paste of lemon, butter and dill. DELICIOUS and delicately flaky. Striped Bass is best enjoyed fresh and it is a good idea to bleed out the fish after catching it before chucking it in the cooler; this keeps it more "delicate" tasting.

If you are looking for a good Charter Boat Captain, give Pete a call at 774-353-7683, we're glad we did! Just don't forget your Bible.

Can't wait until next year!