Jul 20 - what a night

I'll get to that ...

The day started out with a chuckle, as I mentioned yesterday, with my email to Jason -- Plans ? -- and his response that he was already here. It progressed -- went fishing in the a.m. / didn't catch anything but a nice day on the water. It blossomed -- went for a bike ride on a nice sunny day. It ... ok, running out of adjectives ... bloomed ? chicken & risotto for dinner. It ... ok, now the good part ... culminated in a great night fishing.

Culminated is kind of a neutral word. The full story is: 1) 6 good sized crappie, all keepers not like the night before when I really should have thrown back two of them; 2) two large catfish; 3) 1 large mouth bass -- the biggest darn bass that I've ever seen.

There was a slight breeze at first but ultimately dead calm. It was so calm that the bass on its stringer and the catfish on theirs (separate) were moving the boat around. The bass was quite a fighter ... thought that I might end up with a broken line. It didn't break water -- I think that's more a tendency with small mouth bass -- but kept diving below the boat and/or around the nearby stump. Ultimately I got it to the boat, the bass being somewhat played out and netted it. I thought at first that it was a pickerel when I saw it in the water but once it was up close to the surface I realized that it was a bass. Pickerel don't fight like that anyway.

The next fish brought in was a catfish and I thought at first that I had another bass. They really fight but not as long as a bass. There's never any chance of a catfish dropping the hook, it's always firmly engaged in that soft mouth of theirs. It bit on a bedragled large minnow that I thought had had it -- in fact, I was about to pull it up and replace it because I had re-hooked this minnow torn up by a crappie that got away.

Back home, more cleaning. I dealt with the catfish first and was able to fillet them, cutting down the back and then around the rib cage. They don't have any lateral bones so once beyond the rib cage, which is very short, the knife can slide all the way along the backbone. I've abandoned trying to use Bob Simms' method.

Next I did the bass. Never having cleaned one of these before and expecting that there were lateral bones somewhere, I made a slight mess of the first fillet but the second one was almost perfect. On these the lateral bones start partway down the rib cage -- vs the crappie where they are at the top of the rib cage -- and of course, given the size of the fish, took some sawing to get through.

Next, of course, I did the crappie. I'm an expert at crappie at this point although I do sometimes mess up the larger ones. With the small to medium sized ones the lateral bones are easy to cut through; on the large ones, they can be mistaken for the ribs.

All told there were 2 pounds 4 oz of fillets. The bass alone accounts for just under a pound of that, so the bass probably weighed 2.5 - 3.0 pounds. I know that they come bigger. I really should have weighed it before filleting, silly me. It was a very respectable haul without the bass, but then again it would have been a good night to only get the bass !

Sandy had a busy day. She was cleaning all day. She'll probably be in pain this morning, especially from washing the basement floor.

Bonnie has her crowd up. I stopped and said hello as I was passing back through after fishing since she was standing on her dock and since it was still light.

Stan and Cathy are up. Dolores and I presume her daughter (s) are up. Jason and Lorraine went into Parry Sound for the day -- at least I presume that they're back -- some errands to run and visiting Pete and Maryjoe Dwyer.

Today is supposed to be another nice day. I'm going to go out fishing shortly, just to see if anything bites in the a.m. I'd like to catch a pike to round things out and this is the perfect time for that.

Oh -- while I was sitting off the point down by the last cottage on the road (the one that no-one has used for umpty-ump years) a family of 4 otters swam by 1/2 way between me and the shore. They played, they stuck their heads above the water and made funny sounds -- Abby didn't bark though, surprisingly.

Out on the road yesterday I didn't see any wildlife. The traffic was busy at times.

Until my big night fishing, I was going to title this blog "bonk, bonk, bonk" or something like that. As I got onto Osprey Road, I realized that I'd left my GPS behind. Am I going to get lost ? It's not that, I like to record all my rides. I didn't bother going back. Further down the road I realized that I'd forgotten to bring any nourishment -- no gels -- and didn't have any money. "Self, I'll survive somehow" I said, and survive I did but my legs had nothing left as I was coming back along 522. There are all sorts of analogies -- running on empty, running on fumes, out of gas -- but bonk, bonk, bonk is what they call it biking. Actually just one bonk.

So, now I know that I can do the 70 miles without food. I've done almost that in FL where it's easier -- for the first half, into the wind, you still have energy leftover from eating earlier. The second half, with the wind, you maintain a steady pace. Where I really noticed it yesterday was getting up out of the saddle on the few small hills on 522. Reserve ? nope. That was truly a fat-burning exercise at a fat-burning pace since there was nothing else to burn.

That's it.