Day of Fishing

DH loves to fish. I find it extremely boring, though I'll admit - it is pretty exciting when after hours of sitting around, you finally feel a tug on the line and reel in your catch. We've never had much luck with fishing before (not counting the trip an aunt of mine organized, where, with professional help, we caught 2 dozen fish within a few hours).

DH declared that we would spend a day out of the long weekend fishing at Lake Hopatcong, an hour from home. Sunday dawned, bright and sunny. We left at 10 am and got to Mt. Arlington at about 11. We discovered that most people who came to fish here owned their own boats. After about an hour of searching, we finally found Dick Dow's Fishing and Boat Rental where we were able to rent an open boat with an outboard motor. By this time, I was a little grumpy and DH was relieved to just jump into the boat and take off, waving off my feeble attempts to buy ourselves some food to fuel us through the long waiting hours.

So, armed with a few bottles of water and gatorade and rice crisp bars, we pushed off. I had my "Coming home" novel perched on my knee and DH had his fishing rod in hand. It was sunny, but there was a pleasant breeze - which DH found annoying, because the boat was continually being turned and tossed up and down by the waves. Several times, we drifted away from the spot we had settled down at. I just made myself comfortable and was rocked to sleep. There were several sailboats out, a few jet skiis and noisy motor boats. There were also a couple of squealing kids being dragged through the water in a water tube.

DH had bought nightcrawlers and little fish as bait. He was generous with the bait, stringing up a worm or two as well as a fish at the same time. After 3 eventless hours during which DH lost a lot of bait to the 'lake-smart' fish and got bunches of weed in return, he finally reeled in a sun fish. We were relieved that we would not have to go home empty handed. With renewed energy, we continued for 2 more hours and at about 4:30, DH caught another one - a yellow perch.

By 5 pm, we were starved. After exhausting the bait, we headed back, had dinner at a seafood place and drove home, where DH painstakingly cleaned, gutted and scaled the fish and I fried them. I missed my run today, but got fried fish instead.