Another delicious breakfast with our table mates and then we headed out with full confidence in our abilities. To optimize fishing time, we opted for a boxed lunch. This is a little cooler full of
Another delicious breakfast with our table mates and then we headed out with full confidence in our abilities. To optimize fishing time, we opted for a boxed lunch. This is a little cooler full of made to order sandwiches, fruit and cookies. We started fishing on Fire Island and Max caught a 19 inch walleye!
We wanted to keep it so we shuttled it back to shore to get it cleaned, wrapped and frozen. Then we headed out to the waterfall, which Max was able to find be reading the paper map!! Very impressive navigation! We fished, and fished, and fished and fished and caught nothing. We did see some very impressive Eagles, which were so fun to watch.
We went to shore for our picnic lunch and then headed back out. We were catching nothing but having a good time until Chris said he was going to pee off the back of the boat. Disgusting. He acted like this was a totally normal thing to do. Ew! I told him it was gross and he was going to miss me catching my first fish. He acted as if that wasn’t even a possibility, which left me with no choice but to pretend I caught a fish. I said “I have one, I have one, Max get the net”. Max played right along and grabbed the net and also seemed excited. He helped me catch my lure. Which to be fair, did look like a fish! Chris turned around and noticed that we were just screwing around. Now, in his defence, he doesn’t believe in screwing around in a boat. Also, he was disappointed that I didn’t actually catch a fish. He started getting all annoyed “stop fooling around, you are going to wreck the net putting a lure in it”. This annoyed me, because I thought we were being VERY funny, so I said fine I will fix it, and I put my rod down on the top of the boat and worked to detach the lure from the net. I got the lure out without damaging the net and said, “see Chris, no problem” just as my rod slipped off the top of the boat and into the water. Chris quickly grabbed the lure and starting pulling the line to try and get the rod back. He pulled and pulled and pulled. Apparently, I left my bail open. (For those non-fishy people that is the the thing that lets as much line come off your reel as you want). With every pull of the fishing line Chris seemed more annoyed, until finally- he came to the end of the line. And there was no rod attached. He did not take the loss of the rod very well. I told him he can’t be mad over an accident and he made it very clear that yes, in fact, he can be mad over an accident. There was then a period of silence on the increasingly small boat. Chris mourning over his lost rod (insert eye roll here) and me fuming that he would be mad over an accident. Then Chris turned on the motor and we went for a little tour of the lake while everyone tried to recover. The recovery was slow. I think the recovery was hampered by me saying things like “I guess the natural consequence of peeing off the back of a boat is losing a rod” and Chris saying things like “It was a really nice graphite rod with braided line”. We caught zero fish all afternoon. It was not our day.
Max happily told everyone at the dock and all of our supper mates about our pole-tastrophe. There was a lot of sympathy for Chris. A shocking amount of sympathy. I suggested at one point that he brought so many rods I could throw one more in every day of the trip and we would still have enough to fish with. Everyone seemed appalled that I could even say such a thing. One person took down the exact coordinates of where we were and said he would troll for the rod the next day. For real.
Just to change things up, we went fishing after supper. Sigh. But this time went out with our dinner mates and Chris caught a giant walleye. Max and Chris unhooked it at the front of the boat and then Max brought it to the back to be measured. I was sitting on the measuring tape, so I shifted a bit, and Max took the measurement (22 inches!). I then went to get the stringer and I bumped into Max, who DROPPED THE FISH ON MY HEAD and then it bounced into the water. Chris heard my scream, and turned around on time to see his fish swim away. Max and I froze- both worried about a repeat of the rod disaster but Chris burst out laughing. Our fishing mates said it was the luckiest 22 inch walleye in the lake.
Donated to the lake: Fishing rod (a cute red colour with a matching reel) and a 22 inch walleye
Cathy still has not caught a fish. 🙁