The price of fishing

So we had a nice Mitchell Family shopping day today. We finally used our Toys 'R' Us gift card that Aunt Mel gave Jackson for Christmas I think, Renee picked up a couple of books, and I naturally got fishing lures...and a fishing book. Which got me thinking, some time back I mentioned that the outlay on fishing equipment was $109, truth be told I spent another $9 last week on modest lures at Wal-Mart and today's adventure set us back about $31 at Disk's Sporting Goods. So the new total is $149 and I will stop publicly tracking this before it gets scary.

I did get some Strike King Rage Tail Chunk lures, some Berkley Gulp Minnows, and a nice comprehensive fishing reference book, Henry Gilbey's Fishing. Obviously, the challenges that I have fishing are mostly practice related, essentially I have no idea what I am doing so the easiest combination possible would be nice. I like the lures a little bit larger because it gives them some heft enabling me to cast a bit further without complicated weights and rigging (tie line to hook, shove hook up backside of plastic lure until pointy end sticks out of the middle of the lure). I was having trouble with the Texas Rigging because I either wasn't getting bites or I couldn't tell I was getting bites. With a straight exposed hook I get stuck in the weeds and lose more lures but I get a nice solid stick on the fish. Today I caught what looked like a little Crappie, easily my smallest fish, not much bigger than my hand but he had a little fight to him and some nice colors.

More School versus More Fishing

So school is tedious, I really should have studied and stayed in school when I was 19. Try having a full time job (for which I am grateful), a preschooler, volunteer in the community, all while essentially being a full time student. Sometimes my life makes me a little tired. Anyway I have three more classes, one of which is half over and I will have my bachelor's degree in September. Then the big question that I still haven't decided conclusively is whether I should go back for the MBA. Really the three choices are go back to school immediately, take a year off (which worked out to ten years last time), or decide I'm happy with the B.S. and be done with it (does anyone else find it humorous that I will have a degree in B.S.)?

Going back for the MBA at Plymouth State may be useful professionally and I would like to have the knowledge if money and time were no object but money and time are objects and I only have so much of both. Conversely, what I really want to do is relax. Go to work, do the best I can, and when I come

home at the end of the day I want to veg out and watch mindless television, or go fishing. Spend more time working on my Texas rigging and less time thinking about public revenue sources and the privatization of services. Does that make me Tom Sawyer?

Really Texas rigging is an important life skill, because as you can see from the illustration by getting the hook entirely inside

the worm you won't get the hook stuck on stumps and rocks and things. An exposed hook might be a little easier to catch a fish but not if you keep getting the damned thing stuck in the weeds.