How to help a fish with barotrauma – deep sea fishing

If you’ve ever been deep sea fishing, you know that sometimes you reel up a fish that has suffering from barotrauma. This is when they come up too fast and the change in pressure causes their stomach (or other fishy parts) to become bloated.

To avoid this, you can bring the fish up slowly. This isn’t always the easiest thing to do in the moment because when you’re battling a big grouper, really the last thing on your mind is going slow. Any slack in the line could give the fish an opportunity to get loose from the hook, not to mention the very fish you caught might be bait for a BIGGER fish if you bring it up slowly. Kind of like this big fish, or the one in the video below.

So you got the fish to the boat and sure enough, the pressure got to it. If you unhook it and throw it back in, the fish will just float at the top of the ocean because all the gases keep it from being able to swim back down. Don’t fret, there are solutions! Check out this video from the Florida Wildlife Commission on how to use a descending device to safely get the fish back down to the bottom of the ocean.

Using the instructions from another video from the FWC, I created a homemade descending device. There are 3 parts to this DIY project: a crate, a rope, and weights. Believe it or not, it took me a few days, up to a week, to find all these parts. The most difficult was the weights so I actually had to improvise as you’ll see in the pictures below. Instead of fastening weights to the crate, I wrapped chain around the bottom portion. Sure, this chain will rust eventually, but it’s very easy to replace once replacement is needed. The chain provides the weight needed (proportionally) to safely get the crate with the fish inside down to the proper depth. I picked up the crate at an estate sale, and the rope can be purchased at most hardware stores.

Have you tried a particular method to help fish return to the deep sea? What has worked and what hasn’t? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for stopping by…

-Out of the Wilderness

Pickleball – a new activity I hate to lose

Over a recent weekend with family a few of us took part in pickle ball games. If you’ve never played, it’s kind of in between tennis and ping pong, with a few rules unique to itself.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m competitive in just about anything, so while pickle ball is really fun, ultimately for me it’s simply another thing in which to compete. This particular weekend featured more losses than wins, unfortunately.

I can’t stand losing! There will be rematches coming up soon so hopefully the outcomes will be a little bit more in favor of my ego 🙂

So do you want to know how competitive I am? Well, since that weekend of pickle ball matches in Florida (I live in Tennessee, remember), I have spent time training in my backyard specifically to win the next matches I play in Florida. I’m not talking about light pushups and lunges. I designed specific exercises to maximize my hits, my reach, my ability to hit backhands, forehands, slams, and even brought in a person who specializes in pickle-ball-centric trash talk.

Well, OK, that last part is not true, but I wish I would’ve thought about that when I had time to get some trash talk training! Right now my ‘go-to’ comments are: “Get some glasses!” and “Oh, go write about it in your diary, whimpy kid!” My trash talk can use some work.

Have you played pickle ball? Any advice on how to turn my game from “sometimes wins” to “never loses”? I’m all ears!

-Out of the Wilderness

Rioting is cool, right?

I know this is probably not news to anyone but it dawned on me the other day that in American society, there are folks that believe rioting is cool. No matter what you hear on the news or in daily conversations about the perils and selfishness of WHY people riot, there’s an underlying truth that runs from the west coast to the east coast, but let’s be honest, it probably mostly started in California. In fact, California rapper TuPac even rapped about rioting in his song “California Love.”

Did you catch the line about the not-so-civil disobedience? He raps, “Only in Cali will we riot, not rally,” while praising other things like partying, being out on bail, and other random activities that will put them back in jail. Perhaps there should be a whole blog post just about rap music elevating deviant behavior because being bad is good. But for now, we’ll stick with just rioting.

This song was released (1995) a few years after the Rodney King police brutality situation (1991), so riots and rallies were still very much relevant to the American people. Now in 2021, riots and rallies are still very relevant and sadly, are still viewed by the public as “good trouble.” I guess it’s only NOT good trouble if you’re one of the store owners or employees that are hurt or negatively affected by the burning, looting, and general destruction of the place you work or earn your living. But those sacrifices are acceptable, right? I mean, riots are cool.

Kind of like disobeying the law is frowned upon, but video games like Grand Theft Auto are super popular, and elevate this kind of behavior in social circles.

What do you think about how our culture treats rioting? Do folks who riot get a free pass if they’re doing it for revenge on some perceived wrong that was committed? Or do two wrongs still not make a right?

Thanks for stopping by!

-Out of the Wilderness

Top 4 all-time favorite TV commercials

I was scrolling through my YouTube favorites the other day and came across a few commercials that I hadn’t seen in so long. Then I felt inspired to make a list of my top 3 favorite commercials. But I couldn’t narrow it down so here is the list of my favorite 4 commercials of all-time.

1. I remember seeing this Publix ad over a decade ago, and the twist at the end still gets me. Be ready to wipe away happy tears with this one, y’all! The writing is quite clever, too. “Who’s this for?” “Mommmm!” Welp, yep, it IS for mom. He doesn’t want to write the mystery name on the cake, then leaves the cake in the car with his mama. It’s just awesome.

2. This one might always be in my top 3. Sure it’s for cologne but what the guy says has stuck with me for years. I think there is so much freedom in shedding people’s expectations of how to live your life. So when he says his dramatic line, I just love it.

3. Tracy Morgan is hilarious in this one. He plays a seemingly unathletic video gamer who confronts Big Ben Wallace in a stairwell. His facial expressions and his brute confidence skyrocket this ad to one of my all-time favorites. Even after watching it many times, I still catch things I didn’t notice before. “Haha, dog, huh?”

4. Honestly, it was hard to pick a fourth because there are so many that could be in the top 4. But I’m going with GEICO’s horror ad. I’ve written about it before here, but take a look at how they cleverly include well-known horror movie cliche’s in this insurance ad. It’s really funny!

What are some of your favorite ads? Chime in below!

-Out of the Wilderness

Cardinal nest final update…

The cardinals chicks (hatchlings? babies?), whatever they’re called, you can also call them gone! I checked the nest a few days ago to snap what became the final pictures… I wasn’t going to check anymore because the mom and dad were starting to hover (like these robins did) and so I didn’t want to disturb them anymore. The babies were getting big and I didn’t want to be the reason they try hopping out of the nest too early, or just get abandoned by the parents.

Soooooo the update… I checked yesterday late afternoon. I did this from a distance by making a chirping noise. I’m sure my neighbors were rolling their eyes at the weirdo making bird noises in his yard. But for the first time, I didn’t hear any baby chirps in response. I thought, “There’s no way the nest is already empty!”

I grabbed my step ladder (the nest is about 7 feet up in a bush), and checked. Sure enough all except one bird were long gone. The lone bird left in the nest was dead. Not sure why. But four of the five newborns are now in the wild, big enough to make a life of their own and within a year, I’ll be seeing new bright red birds flying around my yard!

I’m already looking forward to it.

-Out of the Wilderness