This past weekend I visited my in-laws down in the Knoxville, TN area.  It was a quick weekend trip to see some of my wife’s dad’s side of the family.  Lisa’s (my wife) mom and dad have been big “boat” people since they retired last Spring. 

We decided to take Friday as a day on the lake.  Her dad and I decided to get up early and get out to the lake to do some fishing.  We arrived around 8:30am or so and got out to start some trolling.  We used live bait and everything.  Trying to catch those big Striped Bass.  Spent an hour or so trolling at a high speed of 1 1/2 mph.  Nothing, not even a nibble.  After deciding we weren’t going to have any luck with that, we decided to try and catch the Long Nose Gar.  There’s a litte bay area where they are constantly coming to the surface to fill the air bladder they have.  Should be easy picking, right?  Wrong.  We spent the next hour or more bobber fishing for Gar.  No luck, again, not even a nibble.  About this time the girls were supposed to meet us at the dock, so we decided to troll back using lures toward the dock.  Surprise, surprise!  The whole way back, nothing again!

We picked up the girls and did some swimming for a couple hours to get cooled off.  When it started getting to the late afternoon early evening Lisa and her mom wanted to try some tolling.  Needless to say I was not in the mood for anymore fishing whatsoever.  Very pessimistic to say the least.  That didn’t deter my wife or mother-in-law.  They string up the fishing poles with your garden variety lures.  Lisa throws her line into the water and lets out about 100ft of line…..we get the boat up to trolling speed and about 30 seconds later Lisa says, “I think I felt something on the line.”  Of course, I do not believe her as the pole really didn’t bend at all.  She then says, “I’m sure of it now” and starts reeling in. 

After about 10 seconds of that we all see a fish flop out of the water atatched to her line!  I couldn’t believe it!  She reels in a small 3lb striped bass.  Small, but still!  She caught a fish in about 60 seconds of “FISHING” she “CAUGHT” something.  I was happy that she caught something, but very very unhappy that she caught something because after probably 5 hours of fishing I was still without any kind of fish.

And yes, I ended the whole trip without catching even a minnow.  Better luck next time, eh?

Do you miss Tiger? We do…

This is a new platform on which to blog.  Blogging has been few and far between for me for a while, but now as work slows I plan on getting back into it.  My friends have told me wordpress is the way to go.  I suppose I will have to transfer my blogspot.com (am I allowed to say that on this site) over to my new wordpress site.  I look forward to learning this and hopefully entertaining a few readers.

Lisa & Chad in Gatlinburg