Big Fish
Happy moment of the day (and proof of the existence of the Red Sweater itself):
How’s this for a catch on a day the Farmer’s Almanac said would be bad fishing?
You guessed it, we took the boat out on the lake again this weekend. Hey, when it’s 70 degrees with a soft cool breeze in January, who wouldn’t?
We had a rough time at first and almost thought we would have to leave because the water was so choppy, but we sat it out in a cove and after an hour or two things died down.
Once the water was smooth again we headed back toward our favorite spot, but someone had already taken it. A group of very loud someones. Despite their loud cries and laughs (I can’t imagine how they still had voices after all that shouting — I would have been completely hoarse) we stuck it out in deeper water a polite 350 yards away.
Hubby gave me a night bobber, a very large (2 1/2″ diameter) bobber that lights up and rattles. I asked him to stick a bigger chunk of liver on the hook because I always have better luck with big pieces. When he caught a catfish on a small piece of liver with no night bobber, he naturally proceeded to taunt me. “Come on, baby, reel in a big one!”
I bided my time, and sure enough, something bit. Something big.
Hubby didn’t believe me when I told him I had something big fighting me, but once the fish neared the boat and my pole was almost bent over in two, he realized I wasn’t kidding. He helped me get this big large-mouth bass into the net, and fought him into the ice chest, and that put an end to the taunts.
Hubby caught himself a similar bass — just barely smaller but still lovely. At that point we decided to stop fishing because we already had almost more than we could eat. I hate to just throw them back in the water after hurting them with hooks. I squirmed too as they thrashed around in the cooler for awhile, feeling awfully sorry for them when I realized they were going to drown in air and freeze to death. That sure seems like a nasty way to die.
But people need protein, and at least we weren’t just hurting them and throwing them back. My big ole bass made a very delicious dinner.
