Field Trip Fishing

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I have been very busy with school. In fact, I have just returned from a three-day, two-night field trip in Northern NJ. Of course, as soon as I heard that they had a lake, I brought my rod. Some of the teachers fished too, and during the recreation time, I rigged up a weedless fluke to fish for a couple hours. 

At first, the lake looked nice. After about an hour, however, there was zero fish caught, and I was loosing hope for my goal, catching my first chain pickerel. Then, as I twitched the fluke, I felt resistance, then headshakes. I set the hook. A very short battle later, I lifted up a tiny bass. Ahhhh... so it wasn't a chain pickerel. However, there was another reason to rejoice, as it was the first fish caught by a student of my school in this lake in four years! 

The dink

The next recreation time, I worked the pads hard in search of slime darts. I even saw small pickerel bite my fluke, only to spit it out as I tried to set. By the end of the day, I had saw about 5 pickerel in 2 hours, but failed to catch them. Then my social studies teacher, as awesome as he is, offered to take me and my friend Trevor fishing on the boat dock on the other side of the lake. There I immediately saw a drop off, where the water gets deep fast. On the first cast, I felt a vicious strike, and I set the hook. At first I thought is was a smaller fish, and I prayed that it was a pickerel. Suddenly, I saw the fish, and the fish saw me. It was a pickerel! It made a run under the dock in a final attempt to get free. I hoisted the fish up, and there it was, the trashing, toothy, chain pickerel.

A beautifully patterned chain pickerel

I did it, and the grin on my face could not have been bigger as I released the little guy. The kitchen called dinner, and I could not have thought of a better last-minute fish.