Labor Day weekend. I had the generations above and below me to help out and the "home field advantage" that comes with fishing your own lake. Up at the cabin we routinely catch large mouth bass, small mouth bass and bluegills. Pike, crappie, perch and rock bass are possible. So, how did 24 hours of the Strange Fishing Challenge go? If you are keeping score at home in my quest to catch 20 species of fish in seven days of fishing I started the day at 5 species in two days.....
Before we even got the boat out I had two more species. My grandson was there to give me expert advice on dock fishing.
Yes, this is a large mouth bass. Sorry for photo quality, when you hand the camera to a four year old you take what you get.
A dock sized blue gill. I was feeling pretty confident after bagging two species in about five minutes. So it was off in the boat we go...
My next target was northern pike. The best way to catch them really is trolling. So up and down the lake we went catching fish pretty often. The other two members of the fishing party caught pike after pike. I caught bass after bass, many of them of respectable size. This despite using very similar lures. Fishing is weird. Finally...
Now we had a dilemma. Having caught the main species on our little lake do we go for the minor ones? Windy, choppy conditions had set in so we went over to another lake, one my son had fished a lot as a youngster. Supposedly there were plentiful rock bass. But instead I caught one after another a succession of these:
Yellow Perch. Not exactly what I was looking for but they count as a new species. So the tally for the expedition was four species and the running tally stands at three days, nine species. I suppose I'm still on track to bag the twenty species in seven days, but to be honest I've already gotten the easy ones. Further Strange Fishing Challenge Days may have to wait until spring. I've heard of a river over on the eastern half of the state that has no fewer than 52 species present!
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