Venice Beach- Deep Sea Fishing

My friend had told me years ago about a beach in Florida that you can find shark teeth. I knew it would be something Stockton would love. I made the mistake of looking online how to find them there and got some bad advice. We were looking up on the beach and they were all in the water. The beach itself wasn't that great and there were a lot of rocks in the water so it was hard to swim. But the rocks in the water were the reason the teeth were easier to find. 

So at the house we were staying in they had some sand toys. One would sift through the sand and it made it easier to find it. If you picked up some sand in the water by the rocks and looked through it you could find little shark teeth. 

See the beach wasn't great- but the shark teeth were really fun to find. 

We had lunch at sharkies by the venice beach pier. It was good but expensive. 

When we decided to do this trip I planned on letting the boys go deep sea fishing. I talked to my friend Emily Buckley who used to live in this area about where to fish. she got me in touch with their good friend who loves to fish and he told me where to go. Boca Grande and it was Tarpon season. There are huge fish! So I booked a charter for 4 people so Bryan and the older three boys went. 

They met the fishing guide I found in Boca Grande and first went and found some crabs. They use the crabs to catch the fish. I guess they just float on the water and the boys used a net to get them out of the water. Ty is scared of crabs haha. For some reason they creep him out. So Blake had to do a lot of the work. They would catch them and de claw them so they wouldn't just kill each other in the bucket. They want them alive when they catch the fish. 

So this was later in the night. Blake was the only one who caught a Tarpon. The crazy things was they jump to try go get off the hook. It gave him a huge fight and he was so pumped to have caught one! 

Bryan told the guide that he want to catch a Grooper. The guide was surprised because they kind of considered a trash fish. But they are HUGE. So they grabbed a blue crab and went after them. Bryan had one on his line for a few minutes and it was all he could physically do to reel that thing in. His ended up being like 100-150 lbs. Ugly sucker but he loved catching it. 

Ty was the next one to snag a grooper. It seemed like it was  a lot bigger than Bryans because it took everything Ty and Blake could do to just hold onto the pole! But it got caught on the pilings and got off. My fishing loving boy ended up getting a Tarpon on his line later but only for a second and never caught a fish. He wasn't mad though. 

Stockton also got a tarpon on his line and he fought it for a few minutes. On the video it even jumped out of the water but it got off his line soon after. He was so close! 

The boys told me that one of the fav memories of the night was watching a boat next to them catch a Tarpon, get it close to the boat and a freaking shark came up and ate it! 

They said there were so many boats out on the water. They were all yelling at each other for being in the way. Tarpon season doesn't last very long so a lot of people try to catch them. They couldn't keep anything they caught per rules. 

The little boys and I hung out at the VRBO swimming, eating pizza and watching TV. It was so relaxing!