We are taking my youngest daughter Grace back to school in the am, so tonight it was just her and I. Grace, Mark and I have fished a lot together over the past month. Thoreau said "Some men fish their whole lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after". While I am not one of those men, sometimes the fish take on a little too much importance. Fishing has been great on a relative basis. There have been acres of 14-17 inch fish all over the shoal. Every night, without exception, we lost count of the number of fish landed within the first half hour. The problem has been that the larger fish have, for the most part, stayed out of the fray. This has been a problem when fishing with my buddies who also fish for a living :). Dabs in particular, has been itching to move into deeper water and actually use all that expensive electronics gathering dust up front in the cabin. Thats just not me. I am all about the perfect topwater night. I was pleasantly pleased when our father daughter night was one of the best of the year. We left the dock it almost felt like fall. The air was crisp and clean, with none of the humidity that has plagued us the past few weeks. I actually had on my Gupta jacket (family joke). There was nice breeze, so the water was not like glass, but it was fairly flat due to the dead low tide. When I anchored, we were only in two and a half foot of water. There were already 4 or 5 boats anchored and several more trolling, so we moved in closer to the point than "the spot". Since the water was so shallow, Grace was bumping the rocks on each cast, so we switched her over to a Papa Dogg. She loves topwater, but is not a fan of pulling 2 sets of treble hooks out of a flopping fish. It's hard to blame her after taking many a hook in the thumb over the years. So our last night of the summer would be spent tossing our Dogg's into a perfect sunset with multiple blow ups on each cast. We even managed to land seven keeper sized fish. It was a night we will remember for life and one that would make Thoreau proud.
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The Gupta jacket. |
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Grace with her biggest of the night. |
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Aug 12. John King |
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Aug. 10. Perfect topwater night with mom blowing up instagram |
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Aug. 9 Perfect Topwater night. |
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Aug. 9th. Great night of mid 20's fish |
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Going to miss my fishing buddies |