Tag: Fisherman

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Cub Scouts Fishing Trip

My younger son is in the Cub Scouts and they had a fishing trip planned 2 weekends ago. It wasn’t a freshwater fishing trip though.

We actually went over to the Somers Point bay just outside of Ocean City, NJ. The group had chartered the “Duke of Fluke” for the afternoon and the guys were all excited to be going!

It was fairly windy and being a large pontoon boat, the captain decided to stay and fish in the bay area only. There were 41 people fishing in the group and after receiving the usual instructions we were off.

As you can tell by the title of this blog, I’m NOT a big saltwater fishing fan. The last saltwater fishing party boat that I was on was back in the 1970s! But I believe everyone should try it at least once, so I allowed my son his first ever fishing party boat experience.

We fished for 4 hours and out of 41 people only 4 fish were caught. Three adults caught 2 fluke (that’s flounder in case you were wondering) and 1 bluefish. But the big catch of the day went to one of the cub scouts! He caught a nice striper – about 8 lbs and around 30 inches long.

Even though it was windy, the weather was nice and the sun was out the whole afternoon. I enjoyed myself even though I didn’t catch anything. But my son’s thoughts on the experience – “that was lame Dad!” Seems he’s used to catching fish when we go fishing. 🙂 I explained why we didn’t really catch that much on the boat and told him it was nice spending some time together – but that didn’t seem to matter much to him. Kids just want to catch fish!

And in fact, when I went party boat fishing with my dad back in the 70’s, I did catch some porgies. Since it was early in the season, perhaps I’ll take him again, once the fishing season heats up.

Oh, I almost forgot. Do you remember watching cartoons where someone catches a boot while fishing? Well it actually happened on this trip! A man caught a black and yellow fisherman’s boot! LOL – I always wondered why they showed that in the cartoons!

I hope you have a great fishing season this summer!

Catch you later.

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Freshwater Fishing Tales and Lies

It’s common knowledge that fisherman, especially freshwater fishermen tend to stretch the truth a bit. Those less educated in the ways of fishing might even call it a lie.

You know that right? Well apparently it’s so very well known that the IGFA has to resort to polygraph testing when certifying a fish as a record catch! Oh the IGFA is the “International Game Fish Association” which is tasked with the job of keeping records for fish caught. When a possible new world record fish is caught, they go about certifying the catch and making sure all appropriate rules were followed when the catch was made.

If you’ve been under a rock for the past few months, you probably didn’t hear that a potential world record largemouth bass was caught in Japan this past year. (I also wrote another post about it here: new-world-record-largemouth-bass.)

Anyway, back to the IGFA. It turns out that since it’s been 77 years that the world record largemouth was caught, they wanted to be very careful about certifying the latest record catch. Now the fish that was caught was only 2 ounces bigger than the previous world record, and as such, it does not qualify as a new world record … but it does qualify as a tie for the world record under IGFA rules. That is, once it gets certified.

Good news is that the catch a was certified. But you should read this article in the “Shreveport Times” to see what the fisherman went through to get it certified!

A Fish For The Ages

The guy had to take a polygraph for goodness sake! Now that’s taking your certification process VERY seriously!

So how about we all start a new trend and try telling the truth when it comes to our fish stories? That way, maybe we won’t need to take polygraph tests when we catch a new world record fish! Can we make it work? Or is it just too much to ask of us?

OK – OK. So we like exagerating a bit. Don’t ask too much of us!

Here’s to hoping you all catch the fish of your dreams this year!

Happy New Year and I’ll catch you later!

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Cry-Babies and the “Me Generation” Or Freshwater Conservation Today

I was reading an article and the associated comments on that article about the zebra mussel infestation and how they’re dealing with it in Massachusetts.

Seems they’re requiring boaters to power wash their boats before being allowed to launch them into a large reservoir in order to help prevent the spread of the zebra mussels.

You can read the article here:
Rules on zebra mussel defenses protested

Having watched the devastation that we have brought to our native environment, I can hardly believe that fellow fishermen are crying like babies about having to take some precautions! As fishermen, we should be the first to take a pro-active stance when it comes to safe-guarding our natural resources.

Yes, there have been some acts of stupidity like the killer bees being brought over to South America and then letting them escape into the wild; the introduction of the snakehead fish into the Potomac river; or the many other foreign species now here and listed at InvasiveSpeciesInfo.gov but as a fisherman, I take pride in the natural resources available to me here in this great country of ours. Any opportunity to help make things better I’ll be happy to take. So my answer to those of you who are too lazy to do your part to keep our resources natural and native – go saltwater fishing instead! 😉

You won’t have to worry about spraying down your boat every time you want to launch it and you won’t have to worry too much about spreading invasive species. (Though if you read through the site I mentioned above, you’ll find that we’re even having problems with invasive species in our salt water resources now!)

So if you’re truly a freshwater fishing enthusiast, please take whatever action is necessary to help keep our natural resources as pristeen as possible – and please, whatever you do, don’t whine and complain about it!

Catch you later.