The waiting game.

Better late than never right?   Right!

Last Friday, Alex, myself and three of our friends went in search of fish out on Murray Lake (near Cannonsburg).   Now, I’m not going to lie and say I wan’t pessimistic going into this fishing outing.  Last time Alex and I tried our hand at fishing, together that is, we caught zilch, null, nada, nothing.  Nor did we receive anything remotely close to a nibble.  So you could say I was slightly pessimistic going into this trip; even though I was trying to be a happy camper.

Getting onto the lake at 8am, Alex and I in canoe and our 3 friends in rowboat, we dropped anchor off shore of cattails and weeds.  Fishing in the shallow and deeper water, we began our day.  Not 20 minutes later, our friends had caught a fish.  As time went on, they caught another, and another and another.  Yes, by the time they had 10 fish, we had none and had been out on the water for 1.5 hours.  It’s sufficient to say I was bummed out.  Trying to stay positive, we moved to the other side of the lake hoping for better luck.

To my amazement, and relief, we caught nibbles right off the bat.  Unfortunately, we still weren’t catching these nibbley fish.  Moving once more, we set our lines.  Two nibbles later and wham!  I got a juvenile sunfish and before long, I had caught juvenile everything!  Sunfish, Rock Bass, Blue Gills and Perch.  I felt like an incredible fisher, no thanks to my fishing skills.  I think the fish were doing me a favor.  I ended up catching 12 juvenile fish all by myself and  we weren’t able to keep any of them.  As for Alex, he switched lures and caught a Large Mouth Bass, definitely the biggest fish of the day!  Too bad it isn’t the season for them, so we threw it back as well.

Returning to shore around noon, our party’s total keepable fish count was 5, including Rock Bass and Blue Gill.

The happy fishing party.

Returning home, I was taught how to descale, fillet and cook what we caught.  Man, was it fun!  Just like dissecting cow eyes in elementary school.  Not to mention DELICIOUS.  I’ve decided I like anything and everything better than catfish.  They are toooooo fishy for me!

Inspection.

Pre-descaling.

In the process of descaling a fish - for the first time nonetheless!

This one's a female, with Roe!

Ready for lunch.

As for the cooking of our catch, we put the fish right in butter and fried them up in a pan.  Nothing fancy and boy were they delicious!

As for the Roe we harvested along with the meat from the female, we fried that up about 10 seconds with a tablespoon of butter.  We then proceeded to eat it on a cracker.  Not quite like raw fish eggs, caviar (yummy), but the roe was GREAT cooked. It tasted nothing like fish really.

Raw roe.

Overall, all the fish and the constituent parts that we ate were delicious.  Alex and I will eat them again FOR SURE.

Thank you fish!

-Sam