More Fishing

Here's a quick look at the fishing process. These pictures were supposed to go with the other fishing pictures, but due to a technological glitch, here they are! The basic process is to go out in the boat with the Judge. You go to a spot in the water (we usually go to a little island right off shore). You start throwing the net in the water while the engine is in reverse. It is important to throw out the top and bottom parts of the net at the same time. Once the net is all the way out, you put the engine in neutral and cruise down the river a ways, catching fish. It is a gill net, so the fish swim part way through the net and get stuck by their gills. Not a very pretty idea, but it definitely works. You have to time it with the tide for best results. Even though we are 70 miles upstream, we still get a 6 foot tide difference. On our first attempt, we yielded 2 fish. The second attempt was the slightly disastrous 12 fish that we didn’t know how to cut up. On our third trip, we were both hoping not to catch very many due to the previous troubles, and we ended up with 17 fish. But we split them with another judge and he taught us to process them so well, that we were really wishing we had tried harder!