"I'm goin' fishing, and I'm gonna miss her when she's gone," or so goes a recent popular country song on the radio. But as always, I'm not going to have a chance to miss her. She's going with me. From mid-November through the beginning of April of this year, we spent the winter working, kayaking, and beach walking on Florida's Gulf of Mexico. Everyday, wherever we went, we saw people fishing and actually catching big fish. Between our home and the Gulf is a small inlet, filled with jumping fish. We learned that these jumping fish are mullet. Nothing stood between us and watching the sun sink into the gulf each evening, except these jumping mullet. Try as hard as we could, we weren't able to catch the mullet jumping on film, so we attempted to catch one the old fashioned way-with a rod and a hook.

As always, one thing leads to another and soon we both had brand new fishing gear. Next, we were off to a local state park ranger program for a basic fishing program called, "Fishing 101." Shelley-Sue, who is under 40, was of course the only woman. And other than myself, the rest of the "students" were in their 70s. We had a lot of fun with Ranger Ron, as we learned to tie on the hooks, put the live shrimp on hooks as bait, and then cast.

Out of 20 or so people in the course, only one person caught a fish that day. Who knows, maybe he did his homework. After our fishing lesson, we launched our kayaks and did some paddling among the mangroves. While paddling, we had a close to three-foot tarpon swimming alongside of us. While we weren't ready to fish from the kayak, we did get a photo of the tarpon. Imagine if we had hooked that monster while in the kayak, we would have gone for quite the ride. We had only been fishing for two hours, and we already had our first fish story.

At the time we were buying our rods and reels, we asked what we needed to catch one of those jumping mullet. We were told, a net, not a rod or reel because mullet are vegetarians. Shelley-Sue's kind of fish- a vegetable lover, like herself. We guess the mullet will keep on jumping, since we're not ready to learn another method of fishing.

For the next few weeks, we put our gear together shortly before sunset each evening. Some nights we cast in the inlet, on others we took a short walk to and fished just underneath a local bridge. A lot of people fish off the bridge, but we were not ready to fish and to worry about traffic at the same time. In fact, some people were fishing off the bridge with a line wrapped around a plastic Coke bottle. We could have saved a lot of money and had a Coke, but we decided to go for the classic look of a rod and reel.

A whole new world opens up when you are fishing or even just walking with a fishing pole. Everyone wants to know, "How are you doing?" "What are you using for bait?" "Did you catch anything yet?" And then, once you say something, in return, everyone offers advice. Advice is great, because we are still learning. In fact, all we know, thanks to Fishing 101, is how to tie the hook, how to put live shrimp on the hook, and how to cast. The only problem is all of this advice is different from what we learned in Fishing 101. "You really should tie the hook this way, with a double loop knot." "No, hook the shrimp this way, and the shrimp will stay alive all day." (Good, now we can eat the other 20 live shrimp that we bought.) "Cast this way, not that way."

After a few days fishing, while surfcasting, Bob got lucky and caught his first few fish. We took celebratory photos and then released the fish with our new hook-removing special tool. Shelley-Sue has not caught anything yet, but her casting is poetry in motion.

All winter, we both enjoyed standing on the beach, watching sunsets, casting, and talking to all of our new fishing buddies. Now that spring is here, we're looking forward to watching the sunsets, casting, and sharing fishing stories with new fishing buddies back here at home in Oyster Bay. Bob and Shelley can be reached at swpny@aol.com