Saturday, I was out with my kayak fishing friend George, and Sunday I had the chance to get back on the Housatonic River with another of my favorite fishing partners, my nephew Paulie. I've been patiently waiting for an opportunity to get out there with Paulie on his new bass boat, a 21' Stratos equipped with a honkin' 250 hp motor! As if I wasn't already thrilled to spend some time with Paulie on his new boat, my wife asked me if I could get my youngest daughter Olivia out of the house so she could wrap some Christmas presents. Now fishing with Paulie or George is great, but nothing makes me happier than to have one of my girls out fishin' with me. I have so many great memories of days that all seem like yesterday, packing a lunch, grabbing a dozen night crawlers at the bait shop and luggin' the two girls off to lake or pond for a couple hours of fishing for Sunfish or Largemouth Bass. I asked Liv if she wanted to come fishing with us. It took a little coaxing to get her to agree, but she said she would go if it would "get her into my blog."
Paulie met us at Sunnyside boat ramp a little after 1pm and we loaded our gear onto his boat and headed out. We started fishing right in front of the launch for a bit, and I could tell that things were going to be a little slower than they had been on Saturday. The fish seemed to be much more spread out and were not biting as aggressively as they had been 36 hrs earlier. I already had a rod set up for Liv and I immediately started her training session. It's taken me quite some time myself to truly perfect the technique. There've been many hours of watching and imitating George's every crank of the reel, every twitch of the rod, and now, I needed to quickly do a brain dump of as much of this knowledge as I could into a 15-year-old who I knew would probably not last too long if she didn't start catching fish pretty quickly.
After 20 minutes or so near the launch, Paulie suggested we head south a ways. I readily agreed as I noted at least a half dozen fishing boats about a mile and a half down the river as we drove past on the way in. Once we cleared the no wake zone adjacent to the launch, Paulie opened her up as we launched down river at about 55mph. As we closed in on the other boats, he brought us back down to no-wake speed and soon his Lowrance sonar gear lit up showing a nice size school of bass. Now all we had to do was help Liv hook one...
I watched with pride as she took the information I had provided her and to put it into action; where to cast, how long to let the lure fall in the water column, how quickly to retrieve, how to avoid slack in her line, how to twitch the lure every so often to make it dance in the water. She took it all in and went to work. However, neither Paulie nor I were getting bit at that point and I was a little concerned the fish were not going to cooperate. I moved to the bow of the boat with Paulie and gave her all the room she needed at the stern. Soon, I felt that familiar thump at the other end of my line. I gave it a good hook set and felt the fish there before stepping back towards Olivia, "Here try this rod Liv" I said, "this one may be a little easier to use." She was surprised to feel something pulling back as she took it in her hands. I few short moments later, we had our first striper, and her "first ever" aboard.
 |
| Olivia with her official first-ever Striped Bass |
We fished on for another hour or so before I could see she'd had enough. Altogether, she landed 4 nice bass all by herself and one with a little help from her Dad. As the wind started to pick up a bit, Paulie hauled us back to the boat ramp (I think we might have touched 70 mph) and dropped us off. It was a super rewarding couple hours for me and such great fun to see Olivia do so well on her first striper adventure.
Merry Christmas,
Jeff
No comments:
Post a Comment