Fishing Vacation - volume two

Georgia is beautiful this time of year. At least it is at the place I am staying. The large open porch overlooks channel off the main lake. In the channel, all sorts of wildlife seek refuge from the main lake. Majestic Blue Herons arrive down the center of the waterway suspended about 10 feet off the water going right past the pier. They land near the edges and fish for food. Cranes and an assortment of water birds meander throughout the cove. The birds are singing all the time and the rat a tat of the woodpeckers rounds out the assortment of birds sounds. All the bushes are blooming and the leaves are popping out on the trees. Tall pines and Oaks stand between the house and the water providing much needed shade. Trees with pretty purple flowers over look the water and the reflection bounces back off the water doubling the burst of color.

Even though I am on vacation I find myself getting up before 6 am. The early morning calm on the pier is to much of a draw to stay in bed. There are plenty of fish to be had without even having to go into the main lake. In fact, later in the day I can hear an occasional speed boat or jet sky and find I have no desire to leave the pier in search of fish elsewhere. Beside I am on a mission, to catch the ever evasive cat fish that stole my pole 3 years ago. I have affectionally named her Esmeralda. The cat fish not the pole.

It doesn’t take to long on our early morning fishing outing to land our first fish. Holly yelled fish on and I saw the tip of her pole bending and knew it was a good one. What ever it was, it wanted to stay at the bottom and it took some effort to get it to come to the surface. We thought it had to be a cat fish but when we scooped it in the net we both saw what looked like a bull head. The body was a yellow color and the tail area looked flat and rounded. It was the biggest bull head either of us had ever seen and rounded out at 18 inches. We let it go and continued to fish. Before to long our hosts, Trudy and Clare joined us.

Trudy had a piece of paper and pen in hand and was ready to keep track of all the fish that were caught. Neither Trudy nor Clare are very experienced anglers and we helped them get their rods set up to fish for pan fish. Trudy had her line in the water for less than five minutes when she pulled out a 9 inch blue gill. She was just dropping her line right next to the pier on the shore side and was able to catch several and so was Clare.

I was fishing with my St Croix Avid 9 1/2 foot “noodle” rod. I had a barrel weight, a bead, followed by a barrel swivel with a 3 foot leader line to my hook. My bait of choice was liver. That is what I was using when I lost my pole so I figured that is what the big cats ate. As my friends pulled in one blue gill after another and continued to get slash marks beside their name as I continued to not catch a thing. Imagine the ribbing I took from my friends who never fish, as I fish all the time and yet they were out fishing me 10 - 0.

Well the afternoon went on and everyone else caught fish. Holly pulled in another big one and we saw that it was another bull head. My friend Trudy said “that’s a cat fish.” We were planning on having a fish fry that night as we had brought some Walleye and Northern from Wisconsin as a treat for our friends. So we decided to keep that latest “cat” and Trudy caught another to add to the mix. She also landed a real nice 10 1/2 inch blue gill and Clare was able to catch a few to add to the dinner. So now in the live well we have about 10 nice blue gills and 2 big “cats” and I still have not caught a fish. Suddenly my pole bends, my bell rings and I grab the rod and yell ” fish on “. The drag on my rods squeals and after a quick adjustment the fish is headed my way. I could tell is was a big cat how it hugged tight to the bottom and the fight was on to bring it up. It started to head towards the shore and when there wasn’t much I could do to stop it. The next thing I knew it was under the pier I was standing on and a moment later my line was snapped. AH crap. Dang. And Trudy says, “so Barb how many have you caught”. Ergh....

I tied on a new set up and sticking with my chicken livers, threw my line back out there. A short time later my bell rings again. This time I am reeling in I can tell its a good size one but not the weight of the last fish I had on. I had total control this time and was confident I would soon be on the board. As it got near the pier and began to surface I have to admit I let out a scream. A turtle! Yes I had just caught my first turtle. We netted the poor creature and cut the line at the mouth as it had swallowed the bait beyond our ability to retrieve it and we didn’t want to hurt it. We let it go and it swam away.

That was it for the day and I was still not on the board. We had to stop and clean our days catch and get ready for our dinner party. We did fry up the four kinds of fish and it was fun to do a comparison to see which people liked the best. The winner by a land slide was the walleye. I felt lucky I lived in a place where they are available.

So day two at our little private resort. I still had not caught a fish and was to stubborn to attempt to redeem myself as well as my reputation. I could have changed over and began to fish for blue gills just to prove that I could catch a fish. But my grudge with Esmeralda was greater that my embarrassment of not catching any fish so far. The day went a little better as I was able to catch a couple more of those yellow looking cat fish and I did land a blue gill so at least the pressure was off to actually catch a fish. We were getting a little to much sun and decided to take a mid day break and try our luck in the evening.

We got back out onto the pier about 5 P.M. and I started to get my rods set up. I noticed a plastic pop bottle in the water and went to get the net to retrieve the litter floating near the shore line. As I walked toward the bottle all of a sudden it shot under water and disappeared. Holy Crap. What the hell! Then it dawned on me that sometimes people in the south “jug” fish and this could be someone jug with a fish on it. Of course I immediately felt bad for the poor fish and shouted to Holly to alert her my find.

We both scanned the water looking for the bottle to pop back up and sure enough, down the shore line about 75 feet it popped out about 2 feet off shore. We ran off the pier and down the shore line following the pop bottle down the shore. Holly jumped in the water and almost had it in reach but it shot out about 10 feet and started headed toward the pier. Sure enough it got right next to pier but by the time we ran back over there it had disappeared under the pier. Holly decided to jump in the Kayak and I grabbed the net and stayed near the shore. Sure enough we saw it pop out again 25 feet away and Holly paddled over towards it. The bottle doubled back headed for shore and ended up in a cement area near the boat house. I grabbed the net and was able to trap the bottle next to the cement and hold it there till Holly arrived and grabbed it. She pulled the bottle up and low and behold there was Esmeralda. A beautiful grey cat fish 28 inches long and 8.8 pounds. Now this was a cat fish. And a nice one. I still felt bad for the poor thing and can see now why some states ban jug fishing. There doesn’t seems to be a lot of control over the “jugs” and who knows how long the poor fish has been swimming around stuck to that bottle. Needless to say the fish earned its freedom and was released. The funny part was that we realized that, THAT was a cat fish and the other yellow things we were catching ( and eating) were bull heads. AS Holly said , well they tasted good so who cares. We have one more day here before we head to TyBee Island to fish the ocean. I hope my luck improves there. We also realized that we forgot to take any pictures of Flossy, our plastic geo cache find. I wish I would have thought of it at the time as we could have set on on the back of the big cat fish we caught. I will also try to upload some of the photos I have taken onto the blog photo slide show. In the mean time I think I’ll take a nap. I love vacation.

Fishing Vacation - volume one

This blog has been dead for awhile. I have been posting on the WI Women Fish facebook page instead and decided to go back to the blog thing. I often intend on writing stories of our fishing outings and such but always seem to be waiting till I have enough time. Well is there ever enough time? So I am breaking up with facebook for awhile and logging stuff on here just to see how things go. This first one will be about our fishing vacation. Instead of my daily facebook posts I will post it on here.

The ice left Wisconsin early and we planned to go on a fishing vacation. It was a tough choice to leave the spring walleye run that was just heating, up as well as the steelhead fishing that I was hoping to do. My fishing partner Holly, had told me many fishing tails about huge trout in the White River of Arkansas. Another fishing pal of mine, Rich, moved to the far south and we had often spoke of surf fishing in the salt water. We combined these two ideas and added in an overdue visit with some friends of mine who live on a lake just south of Atlanta GA. Their place has a special memory for me as on my last visit there I lost a pole off their dock to a giant cat fish. It is helpless feeling to see your pole shoot off the end of a dock like a boat had snagged the line. One splash later and it was gone for good. So off we begin on the fishing trifecta. First stop Jackson Lake GA.

I left the UP of Michigan to drop my cat off in Northern WI. Two hours into the trip I hit a deer with my truck. It came out of nowhere. I will spare you the gross details but it was not pretty and I now have a dent in the front of my pretty truck. The headlights and all the important stuff are still in tact so the trip will not be delayed. Any other time Holly would have harvested some of the venison but due to the time crunch we had to leave if for the wolves.

We left WI the day before good Friday. Holly had to work so we didn't get on the road until after 5 p.m. My truck was packed to the max and Roxy and Keeper ( dogs) were in the back seat settled in for the trip. We stopped at a wayside in IL. By the way IL seems like the longest state in the universe to drive thru. Anyway we stopped at this way side somewhere along I -39. We took a short hike on some trails that we mowed at the travel stop. We came across a bird house that ended up being a geocache site. Inside the bird house was a few trinkets people had left and also a prized find of Flossy the Toothfairy a Travel Bug Dog Tag. Basically its a cute plastic fairy about 6 inches tall who wants you to take her on adventures, log the travels on the internet and eventially leave her at another geo cache site to be picked up by another person. Well you would think I would have won the lottery as this was really exciting for me. I have never geocached before because frankly I hate looking for stuff. I have however, came across several of them in the past just by accident. So this was a big treat and we scooped "Flossy" up and she is our official mascot of the trip. We hope to get pictures of her along the way and make sure she has some fun. ( The possibilities are endless) Anyway if you want to check out the site its www.groundspeak.com and Flossy's dog tag number is 477866.

So anyway the trip continued and we made it to GA last last night, Good Friday. It took us 4 hours to get thru Atlanta to Jackson GA, which is usually a 1 hour drive. It appeared there was a national emergency and everyone in the city of Atlanta was asked to leave and drive south on I75 exactly at the same time we were driving through. At least it seemed that way. I guess that is "normal" holiday weekend traffic. I guess I would rather have to watch out for deer that have to deal with that. It kinda made me cross.

So this morning I am sitting on the deck over looking the water and watching fishing boats come in front to fish my friends pier. The water is a little finger off the main lake and anglers often fish in the little cove right in front of my friends house. My host, Trudy, told me boats were out here yesterday and one man had 10 fish on a stringer. Dang, I wish they were the catch and release type. So its time to quit blogging and go fishing. I love vacation. Barb