Monster Bass

On the day our second son was born I put in 18 hours of errands and surgery and recovery and you get the idea. The when I went home to let the dog out and go to bed I decided to stop off and go fishing for an hour. Then I caught the biggest fish of my short fishing career. Truly a big fish for any bass fisherman. The difference is the great fisherman can catch 8-10 of these a day under all kinds of conditions.

Fishing Retrospective

Fifty days fishing, 29 fish caught, one three-pounder, one broken fishing pole, and one purchased kayak. All and all a pretty enjoyable first fishing season. It has been a refreshing experience because everything is so new to me. Learning to tie knots, then learning to tie better knots as the first ones broke. Trying new spots and styles, a slow retrieve versus fast, etc. Needless to say I am probably hooked for life, and quite frankly I really don't mind that I am not all that good at the sport. It's tranquil and fishing gives me a chance to unwind mentally from all of the other challenges that life presents.

Fish Stories

So I took the Manolin out twice over the weekend around town and caught zero fish and lost my anchor (don't ask). But I really did enjoy being out in the kayak. There is a water poker run on Squam Lake up in Ashland this weekend. I will probably go up freakishly early so I can fish for a while first. Prizes ironically include a new kayak donated by Dick's Sporting Goods in Concord.

So a customer at work named Chris gave me two rubber worms and a hook and showed me a little better way to rig my lures so I am excited to give that a try this weekend. One last note on fishing for the week I picked up some Berkley Gulp Worms, these are obviously worm shaped but with the odorous liquid that made the minnows so successful for me. So again I am excited for the weekend and it's only Tuesday.

Fish Stories

Last week was a six day work week with two projects for school which is not really all that different from a lot of weeks but just a busy week in general. As it is I was only able to fish once, on Sunday morning, for about three hours. I went back to the Messer Street trestle. There was a nice temperature and an ever so light breeze. The downside with the breeze was that it made light ripples on the water reducing visibility.

I was able to hook another large bass in the three pound neighborhood. I was using a wounded shad pattern, mostly silver with flecks of red which I picked up at Wal-mart for a couple of bucks. I had been losing a lot of fish slipping off the back of my lures so I wanted to buy this particular style with a hook on the back. I tend to do a quick retrieve to avoid a lot of reeds and rocks looking for reaction strikes and I thought this style would help. So anyway, I hooked the bass and he fought well enough that I had to let the drag out a little. With the 20 lb. test line it was probably unnecessary but I'm still pretty new at this. Anyway he tugged hard and brought the line under the bridge. Somehow he was able to rip the lure off the line. Now a customer at the bank that I was telling this story looked at me dubiously at the suggestion that a 3 lb. bass could snap a 20 lb. line. But in reality once we talked about it I realized that I am not tying my lure on correctly and I need to learn a more secure knot. This knot will provide a tremendous amount of strength and doesn't look to complicated to master.

The Best Laid Plans...

So I have thought out an agenda for the blog. I doesn't necessarily mean that I will start writing every day and I reserve the right to break my own self imposed rules. In the interest of sparking a higher quality of creativity I will try to post on different topics on different days. That way over the course of a week a thought can be more refined on a given topic.

Monday- Motion Picture Monday's will be for discussing or reviewing movies, either the family movie of the week, a new movie coming out, or perhaps a classic favorite. Another possibility is secondary topics related to movies such as who's the best Bond or the Jedi Religion.

Tuesday- Fish Stories will be reserved for Tuesdays. I do most of my fishing over the weekend so this is a good day to spin some new yarns or share some photos.

Wednesday- World Wide Wednesday is the day to explore unusual articles and websites from the web. A link to a link can lead you to some interesting places, and there's always YouTube.

Thursday- A picture is worth A Thousand Words. Picture, link as appropriate, and credit only no words on Thursday.

Friday- Family Friday will cover our adventures in parenting, what the boy is up to, etc.

Saturday- Jumble covers loose odds and ends Muskrat scores, politics, crazy drivers with cell phones, whatever.

Sunday- Super Sports Sunday covers topics near and dear to my heart in the world of sports. The Tour de France, the Little League World Series...whatever as long as it's sports related.