What I did on my Summer Vacation

It all started with a trip to Mississippi with Billbob, but that story has already been told:
http://www.crappie.com/crappie/conte...arkabutla.html

So I'll pick it up from there. I kinda just went through my iPhone pictures and put this chronological story together. It's not all fishing, but there are some cool pictures and hopefully interesting stories as well. I hopeyou enjoy it.

What I did on my Summer Vacation:

My Sister in-law came in to town with my two nephews, and we went to the Bristol Renaissance Fair. It's located just overthe border from us in Wisconsin. Here is sis-inlaw with Michael wearing the Tim McGraw shirt we had purchased the previous week. See, I did actually go to that concert instead of attending the Mississippi Fruit Jar (I left MS to make it home in time to attend my daughters b-day gift to me, the concert).



The Bristol Renaissance Fair is really something else. Everyone dresses up in costumes from the Renaissance period. The fair runs for approximately 2 months, July 9th through Sept 5th, this year. They have all sorts of food, shops and shows. The people walking around are shows, and may spontaneously start juggling or perform a sword fight. Here are some pictures I did not take myself but I borrowed from: http://www.ladyannbeck.com/
If you are ever up this way while the fair is running, you really need to come see it. We go to it every year.



After the fair I got a chance to take the boys out fishing. We did not do all too well, but we did manage to catch a couple fish to keep the boys amused. Of course I kept busy untangling lines and re-baiting hooks. Once they became bored, I took the opportunity to let the boys drive the boat. You can tell by the pictures that they had a lot of fun. Michael actually joined the crappie.com forum as EdsNephew and posted a couple times. We'll see if he keeps at it, but his attention span "is what it is" at his age.




While my little visitors were still in town, we were able to make it to a Baseball Game. We went to Miller Park in Milwaukee to see the Cubs loose to the Brewers. Fun was had by all.

Another activity my wife got me involved in this summer was Triathlons and bike riding. She's made me ride with her on numerous 10+ mile practice rides, and I also participated in a team triathlon where I picked up the second leg, and rode for 26 miles. Wow, that's a lot of riding, at least in my book.

The first picture above is my wife (on left) with our friend Mary. My wife did the swimming, I rode bike, and Mary ran. The second picture is of the shirt she got some time this year at the Big Foot Triathlon at Lake Geneva Wisconsin. I took this picture just for you DonDon. Bet you did not know there's a Sasquatch in Wisconsin too.

I did manage to get in some more fishing, particularly with my middle daughter Jessica. We tried numerous local lakes, but kinda stuck to this one called Silver Lake. It's close, it has a nice ramp, the water is clean, and the Skiers don't seem to come out till about noon. So this is the lake we repeatedly went to. And as time went on, each trip became more productive. We tried different things but essentially always fell back to pushing minnows. It seemed to be the most productive, although we really didnot catch lots of Crappie. We caught more Bass, Northern Pike, and Blue Gill doing this than Crappie. The Crappie seem to come under bobber, but were very few and far between. Here are some pictures of those trips:


This turned into a two part story, too many pictures. CLICK HERE TO: See Part Two
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