Jan 1st, 2007... Yet another FFF story.... Options

[Jerome]

Well, here is my side of it...

Iain and Sarah joined my family for dinner on Dec 31st. Cooked by my wife, so... it was good and plentiful, so we felt a bit sleepy... We procrastinated a bit to make ourselves to go fish in the cold, but finally made it 15 minutes before the midnight deadline in Boston to fish the Charles. Lara (the journalist) was waiting for us.

Hurried preparations, a bit of prebaiting to turn them on, get ready to cast, I bet on Pescaviva Chocolate, it's already midnight, CAST! Less than a minute later, one of my rods started to twitch. Stupid me wanted so hard to catch a fish quickly that I grabbed the rod right away, and sure enough, nothing at the other end. Ok, recast, 2 minutes later.. twitch... I make the same mistake. Now that's DUMB.

Ok, recast, wait, wait, it's moving and YES, this is a real hookup. I didn't lose any time with this fish which found the way to the net rather quickly, I'm so relieved, I check my cell phone, hey, not bad at all, 12:09. Sarah has fun calling Mark Metzger to bust his balls (Mark had called me earlier in the evening to announce that I didn't have a single chance again him!), we learned that Phil was playing a fish, that's cool. I called Phone, we had great fun pretending that I snagged the fish in its mouth, he's a cool dude.

[Jerome]

Ok, it shouldn't take long for Sarah and Iain to catch their fish. Or should it? Well, Sarah did land a fish, but not before 12:46AM... The fish was safely landed though, and here is the first 2007 carp or Sarah (yeah, bad pic, sorry missy).



I had sacked my first fish, I was hoping to make a group picture of the 3 of us with our first carp. So I put Sarah's fish in the (large!) sack, put it in the water and... me too! Well, not entirely, but a foot and a leg went fully into it.... Plus I feel on my butt on the wet slippery area which tricked me... Took me a little while to get out, this was so slippery. I didn't say anything except to Iain, the ladies (notably my wife who came with us) would have ordered retreat and this wasn't right! But man, I'm wet and cold...

[Jerome]

As to Iain... He's a stubborn guy at times, he just didn't want to catch a fish. At this time, I had only one rod active, cast a bit away, just for fun. Oh well, it worked. 2nd fish landed. Iain? Still waiting. Man! I'm COLD!

To keep myself busy, I attached the thermometer to my terminal rig, dropped it in the water. Hey, why it is moving? Er... a thermometer is NOT a bait for carp... Well, I did land a carp! I couldn't believe my eyes. I checked my hook, no bait. HUH? I realized afterwards that I probably had a fake kernel of corn still on the hair since I used it to catch the very first carp, and it must have dropped when I played this fish. I think?

Still... I had to test if this fish did like my thermometer! What do you think?



PS. oh, and the water temp was 44F. I took a better measurement later on!

[Jerome]

Ok, it's now 1:45AM and I am REALLY cold and starting to cough pretty badly. Iain obviously had decided to be way too polite with me and let me win by a large margin. So I had to threaten to leave, and I released the sacked fish, to make him get in motion... It worked! And yes, finally, here he is with the biggest fish of the night (yeah, well, a 10 pounder!).

[Jerome]

A few hours of sleep, way too short, and we meet with John Westbrook in Watertown in the morning where I had some success in the past couple of weeks while looking for suitable spots. But the freezing rain is darn awful, and in addition of making us miserable, is bringing the water to a low point of 36F degrees... No need to say, the fish didn't cooperate...

[Jerome]

So a bit of strategy is in order here. Let's go pre-bait the last venue that I wanted to try, a small pond in Belmont, let's go home to enjoy a good warm lunch (hot soup! a life saver!), and then back to work... Oh joy, the rain finally (mostly) stopped. That's better. And when we arrive at the venue, where there is an inflow with a VERY shallow plateau, we can see a few tails of fish obviously feeding! Neat! Iain takes the spot, and I give a try a bit farther away.

Well, took us more than 2 hours to land one fish each... They drove us crazy, feeding and feeding, line bite after line bite, and nothing concrete! But well, we pulled it out, I wanted us to catch at least one FFF fish from another venue than the Charles, and we did it!

[Jerome]

That was it for us, our goals were fulfilled (well, except for the 50 pounder koi mirror, but this will be for another day!). Iain went home, and I went to order pizzas to bring to Sarah and Domm who had been freezing the butts off on the Charles since 8AM and stuck to it with incredible bravery & dedication!

Interlude: stupidly locked my keys in my car, my wife had to come and save me at the pizzeria, she gave me a hard time (ok, ok, was deserved), and I finally was able to bring food to those ravenous pizza eaters!

They had landed fish during the day, it was quite slow at times, Marius joined them in the afternoon, and well overall, Domm did pretty good. 11 carp caught, and he ended up with a really cool mirror (no, I don't have any of those pics), which was dutifully reported to Neil.

Nice chat with the guys, Lara had joined us again, the mist started to rise from the Charles, this was a cool and peaceful view. Time to go home. It was a challenging night & day, but we made it. The coming year is promising. Except that I'll have a bad cold tomorrow. Oh well, that was worth it.

[mr_fitzz]

great stuff guys

[Buckeye Bob]

Congrats all....great write up and pics Jerome....way to bring in 2007.

[Rodman]

good work. old cold foot....

[Josh]

nice job

[Ol Captain]

Great job Jerome and Sarah.

"Crackin' " job Iain!

Ol Capt

This post has been edited by Ol Captain: Jan 2 2007, 05:09 AM

[Eich]

Great story there Jerome. Now I don't feel so bad about sliding all over the bank gracefully (yeah right) myself. Thank you for sharing your stories as well as your enthusiasm. Good job by you and the crew. The Public Relations work with the reporter was a good touch too. Hope that it doesn't pressure your swim too much. Thanks again and take care. Hope the cold doesn't last too long!

Ray

[Sarah]

That's funny that you didn't tell us about falling in the water As usual, wonderful to spend time with you and your famliy, Iain, Marius, and Dom, and thank you for the pizza! I definitely had a good day as well. Great job on catching the carp

[Corey]

Nicely done all, Ill try not to get sick next year.