The Greatest Fishing Day Ever!

As regular readers of my blog know, my dad was a very avid fisherman. Whenever he had a day off, he usually went fishing. When we had our summer vacations however, he could not join my brother and my mom during the week, as vacation slots were determined by seniority. Here was a guy with like 8 weeks of vacation, but he never had one in the summer!
This one summer, we were on vacation again in the Catskill Region of New York state, in a town called Hunter. We stayed at a house which could hold 4-5 families or so, with some shared kitchens.
The Schoharie creek ran in the backyard, and my younger brother and I spent countless hours on the creek, fishing, swimming, and catching minnows and crayfish for use as bait .

When my father came up on the weekends,it would be non stop fishing the whole weekend. His fishing partner, Andrew, from my blog story "Andrew Rode the Boat Ashore", spent his entire summer staying at this house , so he of course would join my father and I on any fishing trips.

This particular summer was a very dry one and the drought had really taken a toll on the Schoharie Reservoir

where we were headed that day. The creek of the same name flowed for miles, eventually ending up at this huge reservoir which was probably 15-20 miles from where we were staying. The minnows I caught on the creek were so fragile, that we would stop at least 2 times on the way to the reservoir, to change the water in the minnow bucket.
When we finally made it to the water, after winding our way thru the forest path, we were all astonished at how low the water level was.There were only a few "ponds" of water here and there where the remaining waters had collected.
We quickly got our poles ready and began to fish. You've heard the expression of "shooting fish in a barrel". Well, this was hooking fish in a barrel. With virtually every cast in the water, regardless of what bait was used, a fish of some type was after it! We started to pull in walleyes, pickerel, perch, bass, crappies, and sunfish. It was a feeding frenzy! At one point, I had lost my bait  and was reeling my pole in when a fish struck at my line, because there was a small flashy metal blade that went with the hook!

Within  less than an hour, the three of us hauled in over 50 fish of all sizes and shapes. We would have caught more, but got lackadaisical when reeling them in and lost more than we would have on a normal fishing day!
Our success no doubt, was because the fish population, which was normally spread out over miles of water, were now crowded into some pretty small pockets of water.

With 50 fish caught in about an hours time, we decided to call it a day. We hauled the heavy load of fish back to the car and once we got back to our vacation house, gutted and cleaned all of them and boasted to anyone who would listen, about the greatest fishing day ever!

Stranded- Part 2

As I've outlined in Part 1 of "Stranded" , my son and I were stuck  at the Newark Penn Station train station due to a blizzard.
I quickly inventoried our possible alternatives. Transportation wise, there were none. Driving was impossible at this point and I wasn't about to call my wife and have her attempt to pick us up as my home is about 45 minutes in normal traffic from Newark.
I decided to call my daughter as she lived much closer to Newark. But she was stuck in her car, on Rt 280 one exit away from her house ,as she had been for over an hour! I explained our situation to her and she said she would call me once she got home.We tried calling one of my son's friends as he lived close by, but got no answer.
My thoughts now turned to finding a place to stay over that night. I knew there was a hotel right across the street from the train station, so my son and I ventured outside for the first time since the blizzard had started. It was not until that moment that I realized how bad the snow was. There was probably almost 10" by then and it was snowing like crazy!

We went into the hotel lobby and I asked the clerk if they had any rooms available and he gave me a classic reply:
"If President Obama showed up right now and asked us for a room, I would tell him what I'm telling you..we are 100% booked."

My son and I trudged back to the train station, where minute by minute, the chaos was growing. My cell phone rang and it was daughter! She had managed to finally get home and of course had her own horror story about her commute from NYC herself. My daughter had taken the initiative to find us a hotel room and actually found one and booked it for us! Only problem was, it was back in NYC near where the Twin Towers had stood. My daughter added that  was only 20 minutes away via the  PATH train, which was still running!

My son and I quickly found where the PATH trains departed from out of the terminal and bought our tickets. We waited for the next train for probably a half hour, but it did show up! We got on and joined the other anxious passengers.
The train ride was slow and we had several stops in Jersey to endure before we would enter the final tunnel to get into NYC. At one of the last stops, the train doors opened, people got on and off, and then we went nowhere. The train doors were open, allowing the incredibly  cold air into our train car. The public address system continued to babble unintelligibly with it's pre-recorded messages that made no sense and only served to irritate everyone..  No official updates were given, and we sat there for a half an hour. At one point, I glanced over at my son, and we both burst out laughing at the incredibly absurd situation.
Without warning, the doors closed, and we were on our way again, albeit very slowly. As we neared the last stop in NJ, the public address system announcer advised us that due to the blizzard the train would NOT be going onto the World Trade Center stop, where our hotel was. He indicated that bus service would be provided to take us into the city. I was highly skeptical that the bus, if there was one, would be able to go a block before getting stuck.
I got back on my phone, trying to book us a hotel room somewhere in Hoboken, NJ, which was going to be the last stop.
Then without any announcement, it was evident that we were going to get to the WTC stop after all. The train pulled into our station, and my son and I quickly bounded up the steps of the station into the winter wonderland. We trudged to the hotel and exhausted, made it up to our room. The 20 minute train ride had taken over 2 hours!

The next morning we got up early and made our way back to Penn Station in Newark. Many people were still sleeping there , stranded passengers like ourselves.
We finally got on the train that would take us back to our car in Jersey. We didn't know it at the time, but we caught the last train back to Jersey that morning...all trains out of Newark were suspended for the day right after ours departed.