Fishing

My dad used to take me fishing all the time. Large-mouth bass, mostly--sometimes fortunate enough to also fight with small-mouth bass. We even fished tournaments from time to time (amateur stuff, not pro) and even finished well once in a while.

For the first time in almost 15 years, I went fishing again last Saturday. A friend asked the day before, and I was able to swing the time, despite having no tackle or other gear. He's got a great little boat, which is perfect for this little lake we've got here. Very simple, not a lot of time wasted getting things ready or having to be too careful with a perfect fiberglass finish.

Anyway, going fishing again was incredibly therapeutic. We found another friend on the lake (also fishing), and the pace of catching fish was great fun. Between the two of us, we had nearly 20 fish in something like three hours. Most of these were tiny, fearless small-mouth bass, but we had some "keepers", too. (We didn't keep anything--just returned them after getting our jig heads back from their mouths.) I even caught a tiger muskie that was ~30" long. Good thing our friend was out on the water, since we needed his huge net to get that one in the boat. We were fishing light-weight rigs with plastic worms and light line, so there's no way we could pick up a fish that big with no steel leader without breaking the line. We sort-of measured this fish through the net and returned him. If he had the per-pound fight of a small-mouth bass, we'd have instantly snapped the line or tipped the boat for sure.

Sorry--I have no evidence for all this. No cameras were on board. So this might all be a fish tale, but for the smile on my face.