Independence Day is a great time to celebrate. Fireworks, cookouts and time with friends and family are all on the day's agenda. It's not a bad time to get in a little fishing, either. That's exactly what a couple friends, Jim and Rodger, and I decided to do bright and early before all the day's festivities.
We all commented aloud about the early wake-up call at 0-dark-thirty. We've all hunted waterfowl together for a couple decades now and normally our pre-dawn meetings involve big black (or sometimes yellow) dogs, lots of decoys and MUCH cooler weather. We didn't have any dogs or decoys and the temperature was already 81 degrees and the sun wasn't even in the picture yet. And today rather than greenheads and gadwalls we were after whiskered ones with stinkbait and chum, the latter aromatic enough to gag a maggot.
We anchored my boat at both ends and dropped baits. It wasn't long and we were catching fish. Some were nice ones in the 3-5 pound range and we had plenty of "dinks" to contend with as well. The highlight of the day was a big, fat, bullheaded channel cat that stretched Rodgers line for quite some time and later tipped the scale at nearly 9 pounds. Fishing was good but catching wasn't spectacular. Just the Sunday prior Jim and I had caught a near-limit of big channels in less than 90 minutes. Today wasn't as good for whatever reason but we did manage a dozen nice keepers to clean to quench Rodgers fresh fish hunger.
Even though it wasn't a 5-star fishing day it was still fun. We all hadn't been together in some time and the jokes and jabs were flowing freely. As we fished we chatted and pointed out this spot or that spot where we'd killed ducks in the past. It was nice to think of cooler times as the morning's sun quickly heated things up to the mid-90's well before noon. It's all good in the great outdoors.
No comments:
Post a Comment