My younger son is in the Cub Scouts and they had a fishing trip planned 2 weekends ago. It wasn’t a freshwater fishing trip though.
We actually went over to the Somers Point bay just outside of Ocean City, NJ. The group had chartered the “Duke of Fluke” for the afternoon and the guys were all excited to be going!
It was fairly windy and being a large pontoon boat, the captain decided to stay and fish in the bay area only. There were 41 people fishing in the group and after receiving the usual instructions we were off.
As you can tell by the title of this blog, I’m NOT a big saltwater fishing fan. The last saltwater fishing party boat that I was on was back in the 1970s! But I believe everyone should try it at least once, so I allowed my son his first ever fishing party boat experience.
We fished for 4 hours and out of 41 people only 4 fish were caught. Three adults caught 2 fluke (that’s flounder in case you were wondering) and 1 bluefish. But the big catch of the day went to one of the cub scouts! He caught a nice striper – about 8 lbs and around 30 inches long.
Even though it was windy, the weather was nice and the sun was out the whole afternoon. I enjoyed myself even though I didn’t catch anything. But my son’s thoughts on the experience – “that was lame Dad!” Seems he’s used to catching fish when we go fishing. 🙂 I explained why we didn’t really catch that much on the boat and told him it was nice spending some time together – but that didn’t seem to matter much to him. Kids just want to catch fish!
And in fact, when I went party boat fishing with my dad back in the 70’s, I did catch some porgies. Since it was early in the season, perhaps I’ll take him again, once the fishing season heats up.
Oh, I almost forgot. Do you remember watching cartoons where someone catches a boot while fishing? Well it actually happened on this trip! A man caught a black and yellow fisherman’s boot! LOL – I always wondered why they showed that in the cartoons!
I hope you have a great fishing season this summer!
Catch you later.
