A Fishing First

On Friday and Saturday, Bubb went on a quilt tour with Johanna, and Larry and I went fishing at Sagg Lake, a small morainal lake right on the CSB-SJU campus. We were literally fishing within a stone's throw of Larry's office. It is really best that there isn't a lake like Sagg near where I work.

I don't have any photos from the quilt tour, so if you don't like fishing photos, you can browse elsewhere now.

Larry made arrangements for us to borrow the Biology Department's row-boat, and we launched about 10:00 on Friday morning. I brought gear from home, since Larry doesn't do a lot of fishing. The rods that I could pack were pretty light duty, the one I was using was actually an ultralight! That will figure into some of the later pictures.



After catching this one, my first fish, I wondered what we were in for. I had brought a lot of scaled down gear, but even this fish took a 4 inch lure, and had it deep in his itty-bitty throat.



Larry started out throwing a 2" crappie jig, and caught this nice sunfish as his first effort. He remarked repeatedly how much fun he was having. Have a created another avid fishing buddy?



In this photo, you can see my 5 foot long, ultralight fishing rod working overtime on the first sizeable bass I caught. We were working the shallows around some lily pads, and the big fish always dove for the submerged weeds, etc. It was interesting to get them up to the surface most of the time.



I caught about five of these in sizes ranging from about a pound to nearly two pounds.



We had some equipment problems that we needed to solve, so we left the lake, ran to the hardware store and bait shop to obtain the needed supplies and to grab some lunch.

When we got back on the water, we were prepared with worms, small gold hooks and bobbers. Larry is the unofficial champion slayer of sunfish, or sunnies, as he calls them. He must have caught 25 the first afternoon. He was giggling like a kid.

On Saturday morning, we started a little earlier, because there was weather coming in. With our equipment problem solved, rowing around the lake was a breeze. This sunfish was the grand champion, and the first fish caught on Saturday morning.



I was casting a crappie jig (yellow and white) along the area in front of the lily pads, and Larry was dipping his worm into the pads themselves. All of a sudden, I got bit by a big fish. Here he is coming to the boat. You can see the tiny crappie jig in his mouth.



He was a nice northern pike, the first one I have ever caught. Of course they are toothy, and a little intimidating, but we got him in for his photo opportunity.



By the time we wrapped it up, about Noon, I had caught five of these, in various sizes. The first one was the largest, but they were all caught on the deep water side of the lily pads, where they lay in wait, hoping to ambush bait fish.



We ended the day the way it began. Larry caught this beauty as the final fish. What a great couple of outings. I can't believe that I had the chance to do this.

Poppy