End of a Season

Now that the summer months have passed us, it is time to reflect on the fishing season.  I will have have say that in my eyes, this past summer of fishing was extremely successful and probably one of the best I have ever had.  Both my dad and I caught fish consistently, we caught bigger fish, and with what happened on Labor Day weekend, I caught the biggest bass of my life, what a way to cement the best summer of fishing I have ever had.

Labor Day weekend is always kind of depressing as it signals the end of those summer weekends and the most dreadful thing of all, the start of school.  The other item about Labor Day weekend is the weather, it is pretty much hit or miss.  The summer ending weekend for 2016 was pretty windy and actually kind of cool.  What that meant for fishing is that it was going to be limited as we were not even able to get the boat off of the lift.  Now normally my parents are a bit cautious with the whole taking the boat off of the list when it is windy, but I knew they weren’t being cautious this time as our neighbors who are on the water no matter what, didn’t even touch their boat.  Guess my weekend of fishing was going to have to be performed from the dock.

With the winds howling, the weekend was pretty dismal for fishing. The 20 mph winds were making casting a bit difficult and you had to throw a lure with some decent weight in order to get any distance on it.  Most of Saturday was spent landing a couple of small bass and northern pike by my grandpa and dad. Even though I wasn’t catching much I still kept fishing.

At sunset, dismal turned to fortune.  I launched my worm towards the neighbor’s dock and it seemed my lure had caught a wall of weeds.  My rod went down and at first I thought I had caught either the bottom or a pretty big stick.  Once my line started moving around I knew that was wrong but my immediate thought was that it was a big northern.  I started to fight it and after fighting the fish for a few seconds it jumped and revealed itself to be a monster bass. We didn’t have a net so my dad took off to grab one but I knew I couldn’t wait.  The bass took the lure under the dock and with my heart beating faster than it had in quite awhile, I was able to coax it out from under the dock and somehow I managed to throw it up onto the shore.  I hurried over to the shoreline and discovered that the fish was barely hooked and it probably should’ve fallen off.

My dad came back down with a net and his eyes about popped out of his head when he saw me holding a bass that weighed in at over 5 pounds.  I brought it up to show my mom and neighbors and their first comment was that I should have it mounted.  I thought it would be better if I set it free for someone else to land and experience the fun that I had just experienced.

What a way to end the season.  All in all, a great year for fishing with a ton of bass caught and me being crowned the fishing champion of the family.