Catching the Big One - Liberty, Part Two

I promised my nephew that I would post photos of our fishing adventures today (he was eager to see them, being a fisherman himself), so that will be the next topic from our vacation recap. I hope I did you proud, Frankie!

Fishing:
Though Doug and I did not spend much time with the fishing poles, fishing was a big theme of our vacation. Chris is an avid fishing enthusiast, and his enthusiasm rubbed off on us, despite the fact that it didn't get us out on the lake with our poles. Chris got into the kayak several times with his poles and caught quite a few things (a fish with teeth - was that a perch or a pickerel? - a few bass varieties and some blue gills and sun fish), but the rest of us liked the idea of fishing from our dock a little better. None of the rest of us were interested in putting the worms on the hook (even the fake, rubber kind) or had any desire to take the fish off the hook, which made fishing a little limiting. We decided to bust out the poles and the worms one afternoon right after a heavy rain storm; the fish were jumping, literally, and it seemed all too easy to catch something. And it was. We all managed to catch a fish, except for Doug, who cast, and cast, and cast again, but never caught more than weeds.

Girl Chris was the first one to put her pole in the water, and the first one to catch something. After a quick lesson from her bassmaster husband she up and caught a small mouth bass! Here it is being reeled in to shore: Everyone was quite excited by this turn of events - two thumbs up! - so Doug and I were eager to get out there. Chris graciously let me use her lucky pole for my turn at the line.

I cast my line out to the right of the dock, but nothing was doing, so I cast my line out to the left, and almost as soon as the little worm dropped into the water did I feel something tugging at my line. A fish! And this one was a fighter. I managed to reel it in, though, after a bit of time and a little bit of a struggle. Look at the mouth on this thing! No wonder it gave me a fight. The hook was in deep and took a bit of doing to get it out (I am forever grateful to Chris for having the courage to unhook the fish), but no harm came to the big guy. Once unhooked, he swam away to be with his fish friends, to tell them to stay clear of our dock! Here's a video of the stressful unhooking process:


Through all of this, Chris did not get to fish at all, being too busy being the wormer and unhooker. So after my fish went free, Chris decided to get his lucky pole out and cast a few lines, catching for himself a sun fish (all the bass were scared away by that point). Nothing wrong with a sunny, though. A nice looking one at that. This one was also deeply hooked, so once Chris freed the sunny from its metalic fate we stopped our fishing for the afternoon (and drove a half hour to a late lunch at Moody's Diner. Fishing and eating, our two favorite activities that week).

Chris had a good trip out to the big lake before we left, but not wanting to give up the dream of living at the lake, being able to cast a line whenever one wanted, Chris and Doug decided to try to use up some of the worms before we had to lock the cottage door and wave good-bye to Liberty. Chris and Doug discuss strategy on this beautiful morning, but alas, no fish. Just as well - leave them in the lake for us to go and catch next year.