Two Brothers and Jerry

I need to give a little background before I begin this story:

Growing up my father was too busy building his farming enterprise to take any time off for fishing, I don't blame him....that was his passion. So there were two people who took me under their guidance and started me down the road to this obsession we call fishing. The first was my grandfather whom I lost in 1968 due to cancer (he never smoked) the other was my older brother Mark.

Mark was 8 years older than I, but always made time to take me fishing down at the nearby river.....and with that spent countless hours untangling me from trees, stumps, brush etc. I still get tangled from time to time (and as of this weekend every spool of line I have that is braid other than jigging rods is getting replaced) I believe it was my brother Mark who gave me my first fishing tackle box and put in it hooks, split shot, bobbers and maybe a couple crankbaits. As we got older we continued to spend time fishing and hunting......that is until about 15 years ago. I don't know why but we just didn't seem to have the time to get together fishing. A couple years ago as we were paying our last respects to our mother, we made a promise that we would make it a point to get out fishing together more.....like we did years ago.

Finally this brings me to this weekend, we made plans to spend Saturday fishing....and I asked Jerry if he'd go along with us which he readily agreed to. You can read about yesterdays exploits here:

http://www.crappie.com/crappie/michi...s/#post3637326

After we did so well and had so much fun we decided to do it again today.

Jerry and Mark met up here at my house and we were off by 6:30 a.m. Last minute check I asked them both if they had everything they needed......yep we are all set was the response and I pulled out onto the road. Along the way we talked about different things, weather, quickest route to the lake etc........when I hear Sparky says....Oh, S&*^ I left the worms in my truck!!!!

We aren't turning around, we'll get some along the way which we did, the reason I bring up the worms is because at the end of the day it would have an effect.

We launched and made our way to yesterdays Crappie hotspot.....it wasn't long and I had the first crappie in the boat, followed by 3 or 4 more


Then Jerry put some gills in the box......I was feeling bad for Mark, he is quiet anyway.....but he was getting a little grumpy not catching any fish, and then he finally was on fire catching gill after gill



Then the bite stopped and we moved to another area where Jerry had a big fight on his hands before landing this 18 1/2" bass



We then trolled very slowly next to shore picking off gills as we went, soon we were at around 60 fish in the box when it happened.....we ran out of worms! Not worm dirt...oh heck no Captain Spilly (Mark) had plenty of that throughout my boats interior......but worms we had used up. The fish didn't want plastics....we tried that....they wanted meat, and we were out.

So we headed for the launch and loaded up the boat, interestingly they have a inbound and a outbound boat wash, so Mark got on the high pressure sprayer they had and washed the hull of the Haulin Ash Alumacraft and we were off to get ice and then home.

Final tally was 51 gills and 16 crappie, we fell a little short of our allowed 75 fish.



In closing, we had a successful weekend fishing, lines got tangled once again, and worm dirt is all over in my boat, but here are the memories that I'll keep from it:

Good hearted Jerry cleaned all the fish, I told him I did not expect anyone to clean my fish, but he wouldn't have any part of it..... Thank You Jerry, it was much appreciated.

The tangles are my way of thinking back to a time I must have tried my brothers patience, the worm dirt will clean up and not be another thought.....but having time, once again to fish with my brother, there's a memory that will last long after the worm dirt is gone!