Our first run in the newly renovated boat was Friday of the 2nd food fishery weekend. I delivered the completed boat to Dad in Bay Roberts so we hit the water for a test ride. Everything went well and worked as it should. It was an amazing afternoon on the water as a large pod of a dozen or more whales were in the bay just of Port De Grave. It was a spectacular sight watching 8-10 whale breach at the same time!

Our first actual fishing adventure together took place the following weekend on Sunday afternoon as I've been working Saturdays recently. It was worth the wait as the weather worked out perfect for our trip.

Dad has a season launch pass at the Legion in Bay Roberts which offers a great facility for launching recreational watercraft.

Our first destination was the fishing grounds outside Bay Roberts just off the lighthouse but we didn't have much luck there today.

My Penn Fathom 60LW is still working flawlessly, super happy with its performance and reliability.

We moved on checking grounds along the shore towards Port De Grave finally running into a nice bit of fish off Burnt Head.

The fish were tightly knit in about 75' of water, we would drift across the hot spot then turn around, reposition, and let the swell take us back over the grounds catching our quota of 5 fish each in no time.

It was an absolutely beautiful day on the water. Temps were right around 20 degrees Canadian with very little wind.

With our quota caught we made our way back to the marina to load up and head back to Dad & Iris's for supper.

Iris had the pot on boil so we were treated to an amazing traditional Jigs Dinner with all the fixings. A perfect way to end an awesome day on the water!

On July 27th Bassan and I were working when we got a call from Pete Tucker asking if we wanted to go out cod fishing. We quickly reassessed our priorities, closed up the work site and headed to the marina in St. Phillip's to meet Peter & Johnny.

We headed out to a fishing ground right off St. Phillip's and got into an excellent run of fish. We had our quota filled in no time, within 30 minutes we were already headed back in to clean up our catch.

We made quick work of cleaning up our catch on the wonderful cutting tables provided by the PCSP Harbour Authority.

I even managed to catch my last 3 fish with a 2 prong hook as one of my prongs went missing!

On August 7th Sandra and I loaded up the new rig and headed out over the highway to our summer place in Bay Roberts for the weekend.

Our salt box style home located in French's Cove has been extensively renovated by Dad over the last number of years to still have the essence of a traditional home but have the advantages of modern amenities such as PEX water piping, new electrical, modern windows and insulation.

The property itself is beautiful and quite unique!

That evening we enjoyed a fire up at Dad & Iris's place uptown before retiring for the evening back in French's Cove.

The following day Dad and I loaded up the boat mid-morning and headed out on the bay in search of cod as we partook once again in the recreational food fishery.

The weather was near perfect with warm temperatures and absolutely no wind.

Today we headed directly to burnt head near Port de Grave as there were promising reports of good fishing.

It was slower going this time but we managed to catch our quota in a little over 90 minutes, the last fish alone taking about a 1/3 of that time. Lol.

The run back to the legion in Bay Roberts was perfect as the weather stayed true and beautiful.

While dad set up his fish cleaning station behind the garage I got the boat all washed and scrubbed down with freshwater and Spray 9.

This was my last fishing trip of 2020 and it was a great way to end one of my most successful food fisheries recent years. Great weather, awesome time with family in a boat Dad and I put a lot of time, work and pride into. A few weeks later I took about 25lbs of my catch and had beautiful fresh fish white puddings made at Porters Meats in CBS. If you've never had them I highly recommend giving them a try, they make an excellent breakfast food and are dandy for a cook up in the woods.

Cheers, MIKE

Copyright © 2011 Michael Smith