We are quickly sailing into summer as we approach the official first day of summer, only weeks away! With the visions of summer, my mind travels back to growing up on the fresh water lake where I did plenty of swimming and fishing!
Although I enjoyed swimming far more than fishing, it was not uncommon to see me casting my little Zebco fishing reel to see what I might catch. Some of the more common fish in the lake where I grew up were bluegill, bass and catfish.
Bluegill was the most plentiful, but the large bass were the ones we were aiming to catch. I suppose one reason the bass were hard to catch was due to the sheer numbers of bluegill. Odds were that we would catch those rather than the bass.
My largest catch from our lake-front home was a catfish, which I caught when I was around 12 years of age. In fact I caught the same catfish twice! One night I cast my line out from the bulkhead and I caught the clever catfish. Unfortunately, just as the catfish neared the top of the bulkhead, the line broke off just inside his mouth, and he swam off like a rocket! Figuring I just missed out on the largest catch for me as a kid, I returned to the house bummed out. But, with greater determination to catch a big one, my line was repaired with a stronger leader and it was ready for another day of fishing.
The next evening I returned to fishing at the same time and it was my second shot at catching the very same catfish! It must have been his turf because I caught him again, but this time the fish was not as clever as I was. The catfish made a grand entrance as he jumped up out of the water just before he took my bait! I reeled him in happily to discover he was a meaty 13" fish!
Only problem though was the fish was so darn ugly I couldn't envision myself taking it off the line - lol! I hollered for my father who came running and he took the fish off the line for me. He was quite proud of my catch, and we took the fish up to prepare it for dinner, and that in fact was the first time I ever ate catfish! My father did a great job with preparing and filleting the fish, and much to my surprise there in it's belly was my line that snapped off the night before! The fish was so ugly my mother refused to cook it so my father took over from there.
As we're sailing into summer be sure to grab your pole and go after the catch for dinner, and then fillet your fish for good eating! Bon appetite!
2 comments:
What about winter sailing the wind is so much stronger. The summer high pressure kills the winds.
Cheers
Scott
http://escapetosaltspring.blogspot.com/
Hi Scott,
Yes, that's a good point and I certainly relate to the summer high pressure scenario. One summer while out on a friends sail boat we were at what seemed to be a stand still - lol! We were out in Puget Sound and we couldn't seem to get anywhere until we turned to go back to shore, but we never even made it to our destination! It was a crazy day, but all in good fun. Too much champagne aboard the boat I guess. Bon voyage!
Post a Comment