Odds and Ends and Odd Endings

Holy carp has it been frustrating lately. I’ve been absolutely grinding to make the most of the spring and yet these dang rivers don’t want to cooperate. Nevertheless, there’s been some positives and obviously you need to remain informed. I believe I left off with me securing a delectable walleye. Well, for a short while my luck continued. Look at this guy:

And by guy I don’t mean the fish, I have no idea how to tell the difference and I’d rather not learn how. I mean the cocky SOB holding that fish thinking fishing was easy. It didn’t take much longer before he decided that fishing was so easy he’d take a video of him catching a fish on-the-spot to impress the reader (you). This sums up the results perfectly:

And ever since then, the Susky has been mocking me every which way. I’ve been trying to catch a kitty kat and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so inadequate to a task. I even actually managed to catch a fish to use as bait:

HOWEVAH (Stephen A. Smith voice), I had to travel for work and froze that bad boy for about 10 days before using him. Turns out Wendy’s is right – Fresh, Never Frozen. I should have turned around the second I caught that creek chub and cast it back out to catch a lunker catfish but figured it wouldn’t hurt to preserve it for a bit. Well catfish around here are picky because they can be. They got no time for some frozen bait when there’s about a bajillion little fresh fish in the water to snack on. I finally got the time to use the bait and this was the catfish’s reaction:

Completely rattled by the lack of success, I decided to go to my security blanket of the ‘Nango to raise my spirits – and it worked! I typically go here to catch smallies, which are pound-for-pound the most fun fish to catch. The only drawback is that unlike the cruel Susky, the ‘Nango fish are fairly small. But certainly healthy and they put up a nice fight:

With my spirits buoyed, I decided to go back and try and catch another baitfish and catch me a monster kitty kat. At first, I was catching nothing. Then I noticed I spooked a fish and decided to cast to where it was heading… WHAM! A juvenile pike was the result:

Not a great picture of the fish because all pike try to do is bite your hand off until you let them go, which serves as a mild distraction. I let this guy free in hopes he’ll become a giant I can catch next year. After that the creek dried up and no baitfish were to be had. Despite this, I decided to still go out and try and catch a catfish at one of my favorite spots:

It was a great day for fishing and I even enjoyed some company:

The following video is of a family of Canadian geese enjoying a dip in the river. No, it is not essential to the blog. But I personally think it is adorable.

Unfortunately, fish simply weren’t biting. Regardless of what you are using for bait, a catfish should bite it if it is remotely tasty (I was using pepperoni). I am still fairly puzzled, it was a rather odd month of fishing – it should’ve been great but it was rather lackluster. Hence me giving you the above video to thank you for your time.

Anyways, this was probably my last extensive fishing weekend here in NY, I am hoping to travel back to MA soon and have a few plans to make the most of my time their fishing-wise. While it hasn’t gone as smoothly as planned, I’ll definitely be targeting catfish the second I get back here sometime in August. All I’ll have to do is…

Cast and Pray,

Jon (see below for obligatory photo of Bubz)