Friday: A morning of fishing and an afternoon date with a stripper

Joe bringing in a bass

This title should get me some interesting hits.  For the voyeuristic among you, I’m providing a photo of the stripper at the end of the post.   

  

Lately, as is evident, I haven’t been doing a lot of blogging.  In fact, I haven’t even been doing much non-necessary writing.  I keep thinking about getting back to writing, but after 8 years and nearing 1000 posts, I am finding it harder and harder to sit down and write something entertaining, humorous or enlightening.  Furthermore, lately a lot of my time has been spent working on a Lightning sailboat that I brought back from Pennsylvania a few weeks ago.   I’ve pulled out the interior wood and am in need of some white oak to repair a couple of cracked ribs that came from when it was stored improperly.  Luckily, the bottom is solid and once I got the hull properly supported, the fiberglass returned to its original shape.  Once I replace the ribs, I’ll have to lay down another layer of fiberglass over them and by then hopefully will have the seats and deck boards freshly stained and varnished and the boat will be ready to get into the water.  Just give me a few more weeks and maybe then I’ll write stories about sailing.   But more about that later…  Here is a picture of the boat as I prepared to bring her home.

Sandhill Cranes (I wish I had a longer lens with me)

Yesterday morning, I went fishing with Joe on a private lake south of here.  I am not a big bass fisherman, but this lake has some nice ones and when you use ultra light equipment, it’s quite a treat to land one.  It was a productive morning.  We met at 7:30 AM and by noon, we each caught plenty of largemouth bass (the lake is catch and release only which is good as bass aren’t the best fish in the pond to eat).  I didn’t keep track but Joe said he caught 23 bass.  I was using lighter tackle and still caught at least a dozen.   We even caught a few large ones in the 15-18 inches range.  All our fishing was done with rubber worms (the lake doesn’t allow any live bait as it is in a preserve and they want to protect the watershed).  While fishing, we were serenaded by the forest choir, the frogs singing bass and the birds hitting the high notes.  A highlight was seeing a pair of sandhill cranes fly over a few times.  We talked and caught fish and forget about the outside world except for when I got a call from my insurance provider wanting information on a claim.  But even that didn’t ruin the morning although I should have left my cell phone in my truck.   As it got close to noon, I was telling Joe that I needed to get back home.  “Why’s that,” he asked, “got a hot date.”  Without thinking about what I was saying, I shouted back, “Yeah, I got a date with a stripper.”  “Wait till that gets around town,” Joe warned me as we both laughed.

Below is a picture of my “stripper” and some of the floor wood from inside the boat.  I wish I knew why blogger now seems to revert back to the original format (landscape) when I had changed it to portrait?

For those of you who wanted to see something else, sorry...