Gone Fishing

As part of my walk today, I decided to spend a couple of hours fishing. As things turned out, I spent a couple of hours mostly practicing my casting, but all in all, I'm not sure why it's taken this long to get a fishing rod back in my hand.

When I was in middle school, I spent three to five weeks with my grandparents in Oklahoma. It was a grand time. I helped grandpa farm, I worked in the thrift shop with grandma, I went to the diner for coffee with grandpa, I poked around in the garden, mowed the lawn with the riding mower (a real treat for me since all I had at home was a push mower), traded baseball cards with my cousins,  rode four wheelers, and shot fireworks on the fourth of July.  Of all those things, the activity I enjoyed most was fishing. Grandpa and I would load up the Dodge pickup and head out to the farm ponds he had access to and fish for two or three hours a day.  

We caught crappie, bass, bream, and catfish. I loved the challenge of fishing. The patience. Trying to get into the mind of the fish. We got to be pretty good at it, and cleaning a mess of bass and deep frying them on the weekend wasn't awful either.

I don't remember the last time I fished. It was a couple of years ago at least. Today after work, I had some time so I bought the Wisconsin DNR license, some inexpensive tackle from Wal-Mart, and headed down to the Menominee River to try my luck.

Fishing the Menominee - Marinette, WI

In terms of my ability to catch fish, my luck was mostly bad. It turns out that the old adage is true. A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work, and the scenery and the weather were perfect. Lest one think I left the river completely skunked, I did manage to latch onto a forty pound small mouth bass known locally as a smallie.

Forty Pound Small Mouth Bass - Marinette, WI

You may be asking yourself, "Why does this forty pound bass look so small?" I'll tell you why. Between the fishing license, the tackle, and the gas for the commute to the river I figure this little palm size fish ended up costing about forty pounds sterling (at the current exchange rate) to land on the end of my thumb.

Sunset on the Menominee - Marinette, WI

You might think that a forty pound small mouth bass is a pretty expensive fish, but I'll tell you that it was worth every penny. I'm looking forward to finding out just what tomorrow has in store for me.