Fishing With Jen

  I took my oldest daughter Jennifer out fishing with me a week ago. She enjoys being outside when the weather is sunny, even if it's kind of cold. As you can see from the top picture, it was chilly that morning when we started out. I asked her why she just didn't come inside if she was cold, but she wanted to experience the outdoors first hand, cold or not. She spends all week inside, which is fine when it's rainy or snowy, but when the weather starts to turn she chomps at the bit to get out. It was my second time dropping some lines this year. We had gotten a late start and the wind was blowing a bit,so I opted to just go to Point Sophia and troll around. There wasn't much sign of feed or fish, but we had to try anyway.  I heard from a few people the other day that there were some fish out in Cross Sound, but I'm not going to go out there right now. There's a relatively small area to fish in and I don't feel like being in with a group of aggressive fishermen fighting for a few fish. I really need to try and get my boat hauled out so I can do the annual maintenance on it- putting on the zincs, painting the bottom and the top side. It's so much easier to do when it's hauled out of the water. For years I just put the boat on the grid and rushed like a fool trying to get the bottom washed, put zincs on, do any caulking that needed done and paint the bottom, all before the tide came back in. It was incredibly stressful, and that was back when I could still bend down, lift things, and run around without fear of a heart attack. There comes a point in your life where you have to choose to either hire someone else to do the hard work, or figure out a way you can do it easier by yourself, both of which require money. Oh well. Back to Jen. She's always a lot of fun to have on the boat. In the summer when there are some fish around, she's great about cleaning whatever comes aboard. She doesn't have much interest in pulling them in, which for me is the fun part. Whatever floats your boat I guess. I'm hoping that she will come with me this summer for more trips. I need the help and she's got such a good attitude that she's fun to be around. Of course to her, the boat is just like our house- there isn't anything private at all. She looks through papers, grabs gear to check out, asks about all the equipment and helps herself to whatever food I have on board. Fortunately she hasn't tried any of my meds that are laying around. Not sure what the side effects of taking some prostate pills might be.