5.   The second weekend of the 2009 Recreational Food Fishery has come and gone and what a great weekend it was. Saturday turned out to be a quite poor day with rain and wind so Sandra and I opted to spend the day in Clarenville. We visited baby Gracie, then did some shopping at Canadian Tire, Mercer's Marine and Home Hardware.

4.   Sunday's weather was much better, although we had to wait until lunchtime for the wind to drop out before we could leave. Captain H, young Joe and I hopped aboard Captain H's boat and headed out of Southern Harbour crossing the Placentia Bay to the Bread & Cheese islands.

We dropped our lines at a few places along the eastern shore of the islands landing only a couple fish. We continued along the eastern shore of Long Island all the way to haystack and never really found any great quantity of fish. I managed to land just one codfish and a red fish.

3.   Leaving Haystack we headed back across the bay towards Little Harbour where we finally found a few fish. We never struck into fish like we did the previous weekend, but our catch was now up to 12 fish between the 3 of us. Turning back up the shore towards LaManche, we managed to fill our daily limit just as the wind began to pick up again.

2.   On our way back to Southern harbour the outboard motor decided to foul both spark plugs (most likely due to too much oil in the mixed gas). Luckily we were equipped with an anchor and managed to stay put while we made repairs. At first it didn't seem like the motor would restart. Joe & I began to row with the emergency oars, but 10 minutes later the flooded motor finally cleared and fired right up! We made it back into the harbour and to the wharf with no other troubles and looked forward to a well earned meal of fresh fish!

1.   This week I also brought my own new filleting knife and sharpening steel, so the task of filleting our catch was much easier than last time!

Cheers, MIKE