07-19-2012, 01:43 PM
I received a text message from my wife yesterday afternoon that the kids were driving her nuts. Being the good husband that I am, I came up with a viable solution.
While I take no personal satisfaction in it, I am willing to 'take one for the team' and made it back out there last night with 3 of my boys. Ended up fishing from 4:30 - 9:30pm.
Ah, the sacrifices we make as parents...
There was more activity upon my arrival at the lake than I'd previously seen... You know, what with my vast repertoire of experiences dating cleeeeeear back to... well, one week ago, I guess. [
]
As is the apparent custom, the wind was blustery and required the anchor to be dropped at all times. (Man, I have GOT to buy a real anchor. Pulling up a cinderblock shrouded in a morass of emerald muck off the bottom is not my idea of a good time.
Well, that's just not true. That's actually just one element of tedium in the VERY DEFINITION of a "good time" in my book... but I digress...
Started out with a new lure I bought on clearance at Cabela's over the weekend. Normally $12.99, they were on the back rack for $2.99 - so I bought 2 different models. My father saw me bring them back (he lives just down the road from Cabela's) and laughed, asking what could possibly eat a lure that big.
(Clearly he spends waaaaay too much effort chasing weenie trout with his flyrod to vocalize such a woefully ignorant comment.)
Anyhow, I caught 2 three pounders in my first 5 casts with this new gem. Fools mock, but they shall mourn.
Then, as fate would have it, the line wrapped around the retriever in my POS reel and my new lure was abruptly set free... landing about 12 miles from my boat and quickly sinking to a watery grave. Daaaaaaamn.
A moment of silence, if you will. Go ahead, just stop scrolling for a moment, bow your head, and think soberly of my moment of woe.
Rest In Peace, newfound buddy. Our time together was exquisite. In all our adventure (singular, not plural) together, you never let me down... It all went by too fast. [frown]
Okay, moving on.
Without belaboring the point, we did well. I caught 13 bass, 9 of which were (by my guesstimations) 2 pounds or higher. Though I don't think anything I brought in would have cleared 4 lubs (yes, "lubs". That's the pronunciation I speak in my head when I read LBS.)... My other clearance model worked decently enough, but just wasn't the same.
Rest assured that I left my father a voicemail instructing him to return to the clearance rack at Cabela's at his earliest convenience and replenish my lost treasure...
My six year old chased the 8"-and-under crowd and won the quantity award at 17.
![[Image: gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;tempatt_id...8303d6c8df]](http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;tempatt_id=111817;post_unique=b60742e57783c6bffc4fbe8303d6c8df)
By the time dusk arrived, the wind had stopped entirely. The surface of the lake was glass. AWESOME! So I had them all tie on surface lures.
(Wait, that's just not accurate. Because I didn't want them losing lures that cost several bucks each, it was ME that tied on their surface lures...
Does that make me a bad person? [])
Excepting my youngest (who was pretty much done and just hanging over the side of the boat and playing in the water - despite the fact that I've asked him eleventeen bajillion times to not play in the water while we're fishing), we all had some fun with (reasonably) big fish in that last 20 minutes.
First I made them sit still and watch me cast out the Zara Spook and 'walk the dog'. First cast, just a few twitches in, there's a disturbance on the side of my bait and my lure disappears. I pause for a second longer and then RIP back and haul in another (roughly) 3 lubs LMB.
With that, my kids have their lines in the water faster than you can say, "me too, me too!"
My 11 year old ran a Hula Popper and my 9 year old ran my Lucky 13. Despite their overexcitement and chugging their lures like their baits were strung out on crack, both of them caught their personal biggest LMB on their respective lures!
I continued to throw my Zara Spook with success right up til dark.
Then we raced back to the ramp and headed for home.
...
I took a bunch of pictures, but my phone fell into the water in the bottom of my boat - and, though I got it working, it is missing the first 85% of the photos I took.
So here's what I was able to pull off it this morning:
[inline Condie02.jpg]
[inline Condie03.jpg]
[inline Condie04.jpg]
[inline Condie05.jpg]
[signature]
While I take no personal satisfaction in it, I am willing to 'take one for the team' and made it back out there last night with 3 of my boys. Ended up fishing from 4:30 - 9:30pm.
Ah, the sacrifices we make as parents...
There was more activity upon my arrival at the lake than I'd previously seen... You know, what with my vast repertoire of experiences dating cleeeeeear back to... well, one week ago, I guess. [
] As is the apparent custom, the wind was blustery and required the anchor to be dropped at all times. (Man, I have GOT to buy a real anchor. Pulling up a cinderblock shrouded in a morass of emerald muck off the bottom is not my idea of a good time.
Well, that's just not true. That's actually just one element of tedium in the VERY DEFINITION of a "good time" in my book... but I digress...
Started out with a new lure I bought on clearance at Cabela's over the weekend. Normally $12.99, they were on the back rack for $2.99 - so I bought 2 different models. My father saw me bring them back (he lives just down the road from Cabela's) and laughed, asking what could possibly eat a lure that big.
(Clearly he spends waaaaay too much effort chasing weenie trout with his flyrod to vocalize such a woefully ignorant comment.)
Anyhow, I caught 2 three pounders in my first 5 casts with this new gem. Fools mock, but they shall mourn.
Then, as fate would have it, the line wrapped around the retriever in my POS reel and my new lure was abruptly set free... landing about 12 miles from my boat and quickly sinking to a watery grave. Daaaaaaamn.
A moment of silence, if you will. Go ahead, just stop scrolling for a moment, bow your head, and think soberly of my moment of woe.
Rest In Peace, newfound buddy. Our time together was exquisite. In all our adventure (singular, not plural) together, you never let me down... It all went by too fast. [frown]
Okay, moving on.
Without belaboring the point, we did well. I caught 13 bass, 9 of which were (by my guesstimations) 2 pounds or higher. Though I don't think anything I brought in would have cleared 4 lubs (yes, "lubs". That's the pronunciation I speak in my head when I read LBS.)... My other clearance model worked decently enough, but just wasn't the same.
Rest assured that I left my father a voicemail instructing him to return to the clearance rack at Cabela's at his earliest convenience and replenish my lost treasure...
My six year old chased the 8"-and-under crowd and won the quantity award at 17.
By the time dusk arrived, the wind had stopped entirely. The surface of the lake was glass. AWESOME! So I had them all tie on surface lures.
(Wait, that's just not accurate. Because I didn't want them losing lures that cost several bucks each, it was ME that tied on their surface lures...
Does that make me a bad person? [
])Excepting my youngest (who was pretty much done and just hanging over the side of the boat and playing in the water - despite the fact that I've asked him eleventeen bajillion times to not play in the water while we're fishing), we all had some fun with (reasonably) big fish in that last 20 minutes.
First I made them sit still and watch me cast out the Zara Spook and 'walk the dog'. First cast, just a few twitches in, there's a disturbance on the side of my bait and my lure disappears. I pause for a second longer and then RIP back and haul in another (roughly) 3 lubs LMB.
With that, my kids have their lines in the water faster than you can say, "me too, me too!"
My 11 year old ran a Hula Popper and my 9 year old ran my Lucky 13. Despite their overexcitement and chugging their lures like their baits were strung out on crack, both of them caught their personal biggest LMB on their respective lures!
I continued to throw my Zara Spook with success right up til dark.
Then we raced back to the ramp and headed for home.
...
I took a bunch of pictures, but my phone fell into the water in the bottom of my boat - and, though I got it working, it is missing the first 85% of the photos I took.
So here's what I was able to pull off it this morning:
[inline Condie02.jpg]
[inline Condie03.jpg]
[inline Condie04.jpg]
[inline Condie05.jpg]
[signature]