Ten Days of Fishing Challenge - COMPLETED

Last Wednesday I started the fishing challenge of attempting to fish for at least an hour per day for 10 days straight.  The only real rule was that I couldn't fish the same body of water two days in a row.  Some crazy part of me decided I would add an additional rule that I wouldn't fish the same body of water twice for those ten days (I sort of broke that rule) in order to make it even more of a challenge.  I did fish ten bodies of water (I counted ponds in close proximity as 1) in ten days.  One day I fished Pick Me Up pond for .75 hours in addition to fishing a different body of water for over an hour.  I later used PMU pond as my only source of fishing one day after work.  So technically I strayed from the rules, but since I didn't need to fish there to meet my quota for the challenge, I still consider it to be within the rules.  If it is that big of a deal to someone out there, then I failed. I'm sorry.

The toughest part of the challenge was squeezing in time to fish after a ten hour work day. I usually limited those trips to a little over an hour and hit up water in between work and my house.  Those days were usually my worst number wise as it was tough to get a feel for what the fish wanted.  Regardless, everyday be it one hour or eight hours fished, I still managed to bring at least one fish to hand.

I kept a series of numbers and notes each day I was out including lengths, species, lures used, etc.  I made a fancy chart but it doesn't translate to the blog nicely. I'll just list the highlights in a list instead.

Bodies of water fished: 10
Hours fished:  25.25
Fish caught:  36
Fish per hour:  1.43
Length of total fish caught:  416 inches or 34.6 feet
Feet of fish per hour:  1.37
Average length of fish caught: 11.5 inches
Longest continuous time fished:  7.5 hours
Species caught: 7 (Largemouth, smallmouth, pickerel, rockbass, green sunfish, hybrid longear sunfish,                          bullhead)
Most numerous species caught: Largemouth (25 fish)
Largest fish: 24" Pickerel (New personal best)

This also completed the challenge of catching a 20" or greater pickerel, so I crossed that off and put up catch a 25" or greater pick.  I always need something new to shoot for.

As much as I like fishing, it did get a little tiresome trying to fit fishing in everyday.  Had I not had to work or I was catching more fish, I wouldn't have minded as much.  I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Water Hazard Fishing

Lightning flashed over the ridge as my senko hit the water.  A storm was brewing only a mile away but lacked the energy, or motivation, to push itself over the top of the cliffs.  It was dancing its way east where it would find an opening formed by a river where it could continue south again.  I counted:  one.... two.... three.... four.... and set the hook on my twentieth-something fish as the thunder rolled over the ridge line, a trout stream, hundreds of misplaced golf balls and my head.  

Some intel told me of a series of seven small ponds in dense thickets and knee high grass; a result of a now defunct golf course.  Each pond consists of its' own mini-ecosystem and underwater terrain.  There are bowl  shaped ponds nearly devoid of structure, ponds the color of lime soup with high brick walls, ponds with duck weed dense enough to bounce a chip shot across, and the  ponds perfect for fishing, with a ring of weeds around its' edges and fallen trees protruding off rocky and sandy points.

I fished them all in hopes of a lurking lunker that could crush a stray golf ball in its' jaws.  After my fifth or so fish I realized that goal would probably not be obtained, but catching a whole bunch of 10-14 inch bass might be.  I tossed, and caught fish on, flukes, senkos, frogs, and crankbaits.  Fish after unsuspecting fish tore up my plastics and knocked the paint off my lures until my thumbs were raw.  In total, I caught 26 largemouth with 5 giant green sunfish and bluegill.  I am absolutely certain those panfish crushed whatever unofficial record I had of largest fish, of each species.  There may be some larger fish cruising under the weed mats, but I still had a great day.

This knocked off the challenge of catching my limit of bass from one body of water- which wasn't as grandiose as I was hoping- but added another challenge. To catch a bluegill greater than 10 inches.

Double Bass Thumb

A strange thing I noticed while fishing these ponds was that there were some green sunfish nesting.  It seemed as though they collected the lost golf balls and put them in the nest.  The first thing I thought was that they were acting like bower birds and collecting items to attract a mate, but in retrospect they were probably thinking the balls were big rocks to put in the nest.  Still interesting to see.

Pick-me-up Pond

I have been trying to come up with a name for the pond a four minute walk from my house.  After spending the last three days hooking countless fish and missing even more on the hook set, I needed to go back to basics.  This pond never fails to produce, and although the fish in there seem to get no larger than thirteen inches, it is still good to know you haven't forgotten how to set the hook.  I actually caught the same fish twice from the same spot in less than five minutes so seems that they have started spawning.  I will leave them be for a the next month or so to make me some more trophies.  I hope I don't need a pick me up before then.

The fish aren't the only things making babies