Tag: saltwater fishing

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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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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.

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A Freshwater Fishing Weekend Bonus!

I went to Somerset, NJ this past weekend with my wife for the FLENJ conference. That’s the Foreign Language Educators of New Jersey – for those not in the know! 😉 I was looking forward to a nice relaxing time – spending quality time with my 5 year old son at the pool and jacuzzi!

I was surprised to see that the building next to where we were staying – the Garden State Exhibit Center was having a Saltwater Fishing Expo. Now, I’m not a big saltwater fishing fan, as you may have guessed by now, but I do like to go saltwater fishing ocassionally. So I looked up the event on the Internet and found that they were giving the kids a free Plano tackle box for the first 100 that showed up on Saturday. I asked my son if he wanted a new tackle box and sure enough he said yes!

So we went to the Expo and he got a new tacklebox. And even though it was a saltwater fishing expo, we were able to find some fresh water fishing lures and bobbers. The Nikon exhibitors even gave my son a new Nikon Frisbee!

In addition to all the exhibitors with rods, reels, lures and the other paraphenalia – there were large fishing power boats to be looked at and even kayaks for those with less offshore endeavors in mind! They also had casting contests for the kids and fish cooking sessions with other numerous instructional workshops. My son was getting tired after a while and we headed back to our hotel for some more swimming, but we had a very enjoyable time at the Expo.

We opened all the lures and put them in their “correct” spots (the way my son wanted them!) once we returned home and now he can hardly wait to go try them out! I’ll get my fishing license this week and hopefully we can start the new year off with a successful freshwater fishing trip next weekend.

Catch you later.