Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Bob Forbes and I volunteered to take some young folks fishing today as part of the Family & Youth Casting Call Fishing Event (http://www.nationalcastingcall.com/about/about). This is a 3 day event. The Friday portion was supported by the Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders (I am a member) group and the idea was to take some youths (Family Tyes, http://family-tyes.org/?page_id=4) out on our great river. Most of the youth are in to fly fishing.

We put in at Gravely Point and made our way (slooooowly) up river.



When we arrived at Fletcher's at 7, we were assigned three of the youths, Tara, Taylor and Judy. All of the hail from Pittsburgh PA. I was warned that they could talk up a storm but they didn't know that I would be able to keep up with them.

When we stet out to find a place to fish, the 3 ladies informed me that they really don't know how to fly fish and they just wanted to catch some fish. OK....they came to the right place.....we can help them with that!

Curly and Ellen were already out on the water and were busy catching herring, cats and stripers.

It didn't take long for the girls to figure things out (they were good listeners and great students) and before too long, FISH ON! Here is Judy with a double!



Tara gets her 1st!



And Taylor follows suit!



And it kept on going.....





We literally lost track of the fish that were caught. We do know that Taylor hammered them and may have caught close to 100 herself. It took a while, but we finally convinced her to touch one of the fish. She reluctantly did it but she did it!

Towards the end, Judy started using a fly rod and caught a white perch and a herring on it. Judy wanted NO part of them and in this picture, the fish flopped and almost brushed her face....



Tara was casting for shad (we never did manage to get one) most of the time and caught a few herring on that rig.

Taylor stuck to the sabiki and at one time had to put the rod down because her wrist hurt to much from all the pullage. When the group gathered, the leader of Family Tyes brought Taylor up to tell everyone how she caught so many fish.



Too cool!

The winners of the event were Bob and me. We were privileged to fish with three outstanding young ladies and we had a blast. As you saw from Curly's earlier post, there was no shortage of whoopin' and hollerin' coming from our boat.

What a great way to spend a Friday morning.



Bob and I fished for a bit but we never managed any major pullage....nor a shad either!

When we were going back, I hugged the Kennedy Center wall to see if we could see the herring run up the river. Did we ever! There were thousands of herring on the way up to Fletcher's....and they were in a hurry! I can guarantee that there will be plenty of herring in the river for a couple of days!