Labor Day Fishing

As the tenant upstairs noted, this damn blog doesn't get updated very frequently. Mostly, I think, it has to do with the nice weather; who wants to be typing while it's sunny and 80 degrees out? Least of all, those of us trying to type paper after paper to finish a dissertation. Yuck. Regardless, this weekend's outing deserves a post. So, too, do other trips this summer, but we'll see if as the weather cools I have motivation to properly log the experiences here.

As for this weekend, Ben and Christine came up and Dad surprised most of us (Ben excluded) by showing up late Friday night. Guess he couldn't bear missing another trip out to the little J. We parked in Barree and hiked in to a huge fire ring and spent the night fishing, eating, building a huge fire, and dodging rattlers. Ben and Libby both just about stepped on the thing. He was pretty big - biggest I've seen in PA - but not huge. His coloring, however, was beautiful - super black head and tail with gorgeous brown, black, and tan markings. Thankfully, he wandered around our campsite for only a while before heading up the ridge to warmer weather (I assume).

We had more luck fishing this time - a few mid-teen inch browns and a bunch of small mouth bass. The spinning rods were great, but I'll never leave the flyrod behind again...