Gone Fishin'

"You grab a rod and I'll grab a pole, we all go fishing in the fishing hole..."

From the beginning of Jake & Jill Adventures, we have always planned to incorporate fishing into our cruising life. But with all of the other distractions (namely boat work and then actually cruising) we didn't make any headway with fishing...until now.

We decided that now was the time to start our fishing adventures, so we made our way to the big city of New Bern, NC and the super-Wal-Mart to pick up the beefiest fishing rod (and assorted other fishing goods) that we could find. Jake found a decent rod, the Penn Persuit II (which means nothing to us since we really have no idea what we're talking about), other than it looked beefy and looked nicer than the others. I know that a true fisherman could spend thousands upon thousands choosing the best of the best, but since we are total neophytes, we figured this would work just fine. Along with our rod and fishing 'tackle box' that came pre-loaded with various salt-water fishing devices (hooks, bobbers, weights), we acquired a filet knife, fishing line, bait shrimp and a fishing license.

Yesterday evening (Sunday), we decided to make our way to the docks that are centrally located right here in Oriental, NC. It was pretty crowded (I guess its the local hangout in this small town) and there were several other fisherman out there.

Jake quickly setup the rig with bait and within a few minutes actually hooked a fish! It was hard to believe it was that simple. The other fisherman said that it was a bait fish (someone knew the actual name, we had no idea) and that was all they were catching most of the day. So he decided to leave it on the line in hopes of attracting other larger fish. He continued to add shrimp to the other hooks (since we had a 'Carolina Rig' which has 3 hooks instead of just one). It was really beautiful night and we spotted some dolphins nearby which made us hopeful that there may be larger fish in the area. But none of those fish came nearby and after an hour, we decided to call it a night.

This morning, Jake decided to fish off the back of our boat. Figured we have shrimp bait that won't last much longer and why not? And it was worth it, because after only an hour, he caught his first 3-pound (approx) spotted sea trout!

After watching a couple you tube videos online, he filleted the fish with no big issue and got two beautiful (and tiny) filets that we enjoyed for lunch with some basil couscous. By my calculations, if we catch another 799 of these guys, the fishing gear will have paid for itself! ;)