fishing partners

[wolc123]

That turkeyfeather thread with his daughter and the big walleye got me thinking of all the fishing partners I have had thru almost 50 years.  I have had lots of them, starting with my mom's dad when I was three years old.   He always wanted a boy, but got three daughters instead and was thrilled with his first grandson (me).   Not many girls seem to get "bitten" by the fishing bug.   My youngest daughter gets into it a bit at times, but it is low on her priority list.   My wife seemed to like it a lot while we were dating and first married, but lost interest after we had a couple kids.  A lot of friends have fished with me thru the years, and I can think of about a dozen who would probably go this weekend if I gave them a call.   Fortunately, there has been one who has been along on every trip.  A couple trips ago, in late August, He really made his presence felt.

We were camping down on Findley lake, in the far SW corner of NY state.   This is normally a slow time on that lake.  The fish must get lazy when the water temperature reaches it's late summer peak.  My friend's 20 year old son (who is about the only person I know who likes fishing as much as I did at that age), and me had tried every trick in the book, starting at sunrise, with not so much as a nibble.   We went back to the campsite for lunch with our families.   Mid-day is usually the worst time to fish there, but we grabbed our rain gear (the sky was turning grey) and headed back out after a quick meal with the girls.

Back out on the lake, it soon began to rain.  At times the showers were intense, but they did not last long.   The wind was not bad, it was warm, and we had rain gear.  Between downpours, music began to play.  Apparently the rain had shorted something out in the wiring, causing our boat's radio to come on.  It was a Christian channel and the song was about Jesus.   Within minutes of the music starting, we landed our first fish (a northern pike of about 30 inches length).  We decided to let the music play and I even cranked up the volume a bit.  Over the next several hours, the action was almost non-stop, including a few "doubles" where we had to take turns with the net.   Our boat's livewell could not hold all the fish.   On that trip, we ended up with 15 keeper sized northers (all of which we released), and 3 smallmouth bass (we kept two of them to eat).  About half of the northerns were over 30 inches, and the largest was 35.   So much for "keeping quite to not scare the fish".