Can't do work, gotta fish

Our linux server at work was down yesterday, which I depend on for my research. I knew it wouldn't be up and running this morning so I went fishing instead. I hiked out to the end of picnic point and had my line in the water by 7am. Feeling lazy, I stuck with nightcrawlers and a bobber, hoping to catch a few fish to bring home. My first cast got a hit and I pulled in an 8" perch. It was pretty fat and went into the bucket. After that... nothing. I switched spots, and after not getting hits there either I began reeling in my line. However, I saw a drum following my bait in towards shore, so I slowed down to let him grab it. That made for an easy catch. At 14", he was a PR for me. After that things really slowed down. At one point a school of small perch came through. I caught 4 or 5, but they were all too small to keep.





When I got home I filleted the drum and perch for lunch. I breaded the fillets with a mixture of Progresso parmesean bread crumbs, extra spicy Mrs. Dash, and garlic powder, and fried them in olive oil. The drum was pretty good, but when I got to the perch - oh man! It was really really good, I'll have to try to duplicate that recipe next time I catch perch.

4th of July in Milwaukee

I visited my friend Terry in Milwaukee for the weekend. We got up at 4:30 on Saturday to go fishing on Lake Michigan. By 5:15 we were in the harbor. We went about 2 miles off from shore to 70' of water where we planned to troll for trout. Terry got the downriggers set up, we got our lines in the water... but when Terry was trying to start the trolling motor he broke a piece on the fuel line. That was the end of that! The big motor apparently can't idle down low enough to troll with, so we had to head back to the harbor.

We had seen people fishing for perch from the rocks around the harbor, so we followed suit and anchored along shore in 15-20' of water and dropped jigs down to the bottom. No perch, but we caught plenty of round gobies. Definitely not the fish we were after, but they were pretty entertaining. +1 to my life list and 2009 list.