June 22nd 2008 – Massabesic Lake

My first outing with the new Kayak. I did not have a paddle yet so I needed to go to LLBean to pick one up. Brought Ryan with me as he was also wanting to try the kayak out. He actually thinks it is his because I told him that he would get a yellow one and I would get a blue one.

Got it in the water and paddled out across the bay by the sailboats over to the shoreline heading towards Manchester. Did not really plan that but just wanted to target something to paddle to and hoping that there would be fish there. Got there and found a pod of sunfish on beds. Ryan had a blast catching one after another. He could see the fish biting too which added to the excitement. I hooked into something near some lily pads that move through the water like a pike. I’ll bet it was. Fish was in control on that one and moved at an angle then released the hook. It was big whatever it was.

Ryan caught 7 sunfish and kept counting as he caught them saying the next number is how many he wanted to catch. While working on number 8 I wanted to move further down to see if there were any bass. I said, I want to try another spot to find some fish. He said, they were right there where we were fishing. I said lets try another spot and if we don’t get them we will go back. I took one cast then heard the paddles moving water. Looked back and said, what are you doing? He said, you did not catch anything so we are going back. Ha ha.

We headed in and put a checkbox next to this day as a special one. The week before he fell down at a fisher cats game and ended up with 6 stitches claiming that to be the worst day of his life. After coming back from this trip, as we ate dinner he looked at me and said, “daddy, this was the best day of my life!”. Ha ha. What an awesome thing to hear.

Advertisement

June 21/22 2008 – Joppa Night Trip

Having a skunk to reset, I needed to catch something. Had been a couple of weeks since I went out on the salt and I was hearing good reports of a nite bight out on Joppa. Having only done this once before without success I hesitated on planning it and had lots of other things going on that kept planning this out of the picture. Finally, at the last minute around 9-10 PM after my Table Lodge from the Masons, I decided on heading out to see what would happen. Oddly I called Nelson up around 10PM and asked him what he was doing. He said, I’m going striper fishing with a friend? I said, you want to do that from a boat?

Nelson and his buddy Rick met up with me out in Newburyport and we headed for the flats. Weather was perfect and as soon as we got out on the flats we heard big fish busting. Loud splashes. Traffic was not too bad out there either.

I was using one of the bigger sluggos on a heavier rod and got a few bumps. Rick also reported feeling a bump or two. Put some smelly jelly on my bait after that and eventually the bump became a bent rod. I could tell I had a good fish on as it was taking line and splashing all over. I was worried that the fish would cross some of the other boats nearby and started the motor to chase it down a little. After about a 15 minute fight, I got the fish along side of the boat. Asked Nelson to grab it. Took him two hands to lift it out of the water. 22 pounds and 40 inches were the numbers. Fat, fat, fish too.

We fished the rest of the night all doing the same thing with the black or darker sluggos only to watch the sun rise. After it did, there were some boiling fish here and there. Nelson hooked up into a big fish at this time and had it on for about 5 minutes worth of stripping line. Then, his hook snapped off. That was a bummer. He hooked up one more time on another good fish but this time it was a much quicker release.

Nelson and I got a few more schoolies after the sun came up and then he actually caught a fishing pole. That was weird. It was a shorter surf casting rod. He later cleaned it up and found it to be in pretty good condition. See, you never know what you will catch in the ocean. 🙂

June 21st 2008 – Deering Reservoir

Deering Reservoir
Took the boat with bimini top out to Deering with the family for some light fishing / boating. We hit the sand bar to go swimming and fishing. Ryan hooked up with a nice bass all by himself wading along the sand bar. That was awesome and he loved it. After a quick picture we released it and he wanted to then go swimming. Water was still a little cool for me, I played along and swam with him for a short time. Then we hit a few spots around the islands only seeing fish. Had a big fat zero on my forehead but had fun with my family.