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  • Little Miss Judy's Believe It or Not!

    This is my father Captain Sherman I Helmey of way back then Captain Helmey’s Charter Boat Company. He is sitting on a 1980 T-Craft that he had built in Titusville, Florida. The board that he is sitting on is actually a fine piece of teak wood, which my father has graciously painted with white oil base paint! Why not passing highway yellow? He ran out of that paint!





    This was our old fishing sign, which was hung in a many a gas station and tackle store! Let’s see, while thinking about yesteryear, exactly what were we advertising! Deep sea fishing was consider bottom fishing at its finest and believe me we caught a whole lot of bottom fish! And or course sport fishing was trolling and live lining for top water fish! What do I remember most about this era? No regulations! There was something else that I certainly remember also and that’s all the different kinds of fish we caught that we couldn’t possibly identify! One of the first fish that we caught, which looked like a very strange king mackerel was in fact a Yahoo Wahoo! Our first ever seen on our boats genuine red snapper was caught while bottom fishing at the Black fish banks! Believe me the only reason we knew it was a red snapper was because it was red! Then there were those brown fish sporting different colors/spots and flashy tails. Yes, you guessed it! It was scamp and gags grouper!


    Weather by Sherman Weather-logy
    My Father wasn’t a meteorologist nor did he claim to be, but he knew his weather. He also had a few signs that he respected and trusted when he saw them.


    My father and I would travel quite a bit together especially when I was young. Back in the good old days there weren’t any hand held video game to play with. So therefore Daddy made up a few counting games that were great and very time consuming. The one that liked the most was the counting of the cow’s game. The rules were simple. The one who had the most cows on their side at the end of the trip won. As I got older he tried to complicate the counting of the cows a little more, but we won’t get into that story at this time.


    At any rate the weather story for this game was again simple. If the cow were laying down this was an indication that it was going to rain and it usually did. Another thing that he would point out to me was the leaves on the trees. If there were pointed up this meant it was going to rain. The sad thing about these particular weather logics is that I haven’t been able to apply it my offshore activities.


    However here’s one you can use offshore. It’s about the arrival of the “biting black flies.” According to my father weather forecasting logic arrival of these flies is an indication that the northeast wind is going to blow. In other words if you are offshore and the biting black flies attack you can count on the northeast winds to start blowing soon. Please don’t think you have to head home at that particular time, because this is just a pre warming of the winds to come. For instance, if only a few flies come to your boat the wind probably isn’t going to be real bad. However if a lot of them show up it could very well mean that you are in for one heck of a blow. According to my father a northeaster usually lasts in a pattern of certain amount of days. This means that this wind will usually blow for 3, 6, or 9 days. The good news is you usually have at least 24 to 36 hours before the northeast winds starts to howl.


    For the good news this stuff really works. I have used this Sherman weather-logy that my father passed down to me time a time again with great luck. In fact it’s kind of nice knowing and predicting the weather without having to turn on the television or computer. However, I still do just in case those flies just happened to have taken a very wrong turn!


    Thanks for reading! Captain Judy